Since Mark Driscoll and Sutton Turner have been named as plaintiffs in a complaint this year it might be worth revisiting everything that was said about Sutton Turner as the "king" of Mars Hill. Even if we set aside concerns that the prophet/priest/king taxonomy formulated within Mars Hill seemed like little more than a Myers & Briggs Type Indicator but for church leaders ... there's something else to consider. Anybody remember what the Old Testament had to say about the appointment of kings in Israel? No? Shame on you for not reading Deuteronomy for the joy of it ...
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+17&version=ESV
Deuteronomy 17:14-15
14 “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
That would seem clear enough, whoever the appointed king is, he should not be a foreigner but one chosen from among the people. Even if some of us had ... to put it VERY NICELY, severe doubts about Munson's fitness to be the formal president of Mars Hill ... he did at least the homeboy qualification. Turner? He was brought in from literally another country.
What's kind of breath-taking is how obvious it was Sutton Turner was literally a fly-in from overseas. If Mars Hill was going to use the language of "king" and "kingly" gifts and insist that there was a scripturally defensible basis for there being a "king" the least they could have done was attempt consistency with their own jargon by sticking to leaders cultivated from within. A work night does not necessarily permit an exhaustive survey of what "could" be quoted ... but it's interesting how defensive Sutton Turner and Justin Dean turned out to be about Tripp's comments ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-changing-tune-mars-hill-leaders.html
as documented above when, if they'd just read the Bible and considered the prohibition against kings appointed from outside the people neither of these guys should have been entirely shocked that their respective tenures within Mars Hill ended as Mars Hill spiraled into death. Let's review, shall we, what got said about the challenges Turner faced assimilating into Mars Hill and the preparatory praise he got.
http://investyourgifts.com/resultsource1/
....
In April 2011, I joined Mars Hill as the General Manager and reported to the Executive Pastor. I had enjoyed the teaching via podcast from overseas since 2007. My family and I looked forward to attending and serving in the church that we had enjoyed from afar, a church that loved Jesus and preached the gospel. I looked forward to using my gifts and experience to further the mission of Jesus through the local church.
When I arrived at Mars Hill, the financial books were a mess. During my first week, I asked the finance director to bring me the financials. He said he could provide me with September 2010 because they were about to close out the books for October. Financial reporting was six months behind. I thought, “How do they know how they’re doing financially?!” The finance team handed me a bank statement. (If you are in finance or accounting, you just cringed as you read the last sentence.)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/19/sutton-turners-status-at-mars-hill-church-uncertain/
and
https://marshill.com/2014/09/19/the-weekly-9-19-14
UPDATE FROM THE BOAA
Dear Mars Hill,
Earlier this month Pastor Sutton Turner informed our board of his intention to resign from his current staff and elder position. His personal decision is a sober acknowledgement that it would not be financially feasible for him to stay on staff as the church rightsizes itself, and secondly, not emotionally prudent to subject his family to what has been an ongoing season of personal attacks. We want to be clear: there are no disqualifying factors related to his decision.
Sutton put it this way: “Since 2007, Pastor Mark has impacted my life in a significant way. I am thankful to call him my brother, my pastor, and my friend. When I came to Mars Hill in 2011, my plan was to be here for a year, get theologically trained, and focus on the adoption of my son before entering back into the business world. Three and a half years later, I have been able to serve a church that I love as a staff member, but it is now time that I transition off of staff and return to the business world.”
In other words, in the BoAA account Turner was quoted as saying the plan was to show up, train for a bit in theology and then go back into the business world. Really? This was kind of second-hand although Turner may well have said precisely what he was quoted as saying. It's just that that account makes it seem as though Sutton Turner himself did not imagine he was going to end up being a "king".
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/10/sutton-turner-in-2012-on-mars-hill-churchs-financial-situation-we-are-in-a-big-mess/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/09/Current-Financial-Situation-March-17-12.pdf
Executive Elders
Current Financial Situation
Saturday, March 17, 2012...
After being at Mars Hill for 10 months and in my current role for 3 months, I now have a picture of a very broken and fundamentally financially unsustainable organization. I am sorry that I have not been able to really see the financial picture of the organization until just this week. So many distractions with A29, Real Marriage, GWOW, distractions with Churches, my Eldership, and a very incompetent staff when I arrived has kept me from not seeing the picture. But now I see the organization very clearly and we have some difficult decisions to make.
"GWOW" is most likely a shorthand for God's Work, Our Witness.
One of the greatest and most harmful events was Pastor Jamie resigning and leaving me in this job as General Manager/Executive Elder. From early June until he resigned in August, he had basically checked out. So I had less than 6 weeks as General Manager before becoming #1 King without being an Elder. Then finally in November, I was made an Executive Pastor without have any creditability with the staff. This single fact hindered my ability to really even understand the organization or the people, much less see the problems as they had existed for a long time.
Of course ... if you think about it all in light of Deuteronomy 17 why WOULD he have had any credibility? He was a complete outsider who was brought in as a hired hand rather than appointed from among the people.
Now compare Van Skaik's account of Turner describing his path to Mars Hill from earlier to Mark Driscoll's introductions for Sutton Turner.
http://marshill.com/2011/11/23/introducing-pastor-sutton-turner
By: Pastor Mark Driscoll
Posted: Nov 23, 2011
Earlier this year, the Turner family moved around the world just to be a part of Mars Hill Church. They’d been listening to the podcast for many years, and when the opportunity arose to join the ministry, Sutton left a lucrative job in the Middle East to use his gifts to serve the church. [emphasis added]
Pastor Sutton’s experience has already been a huge benefit. He has a degree from Harvard Business School, led multibillion-dollar organizations, and even worked as an executive pastor for a number of years at a large church in Texas. More importantly, he is a godly man with a delightful family.
By God’s grace, Mars Hill Church is in an amazing season of growth. With that comes significantly more complexities, however. We need help and we’ve been searching for a leader of Sutton’s caliber for awhile. God is faithful and brought the right man at the right time.
and from the letters announcing Jamie Munson's resignation
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
Pastor Dave and I both believe Pastor Scott is the best choice for this role in this season. Pastor Scott [Thomas] has been very clear in his love and commitment to Mars Hill and has said he will gladly serve wherever he is needed, which we deeply appreciate. Administratively, Pastor Jamie was our senior "king" and his departure requires very competent leadership to cover his many responsibilities. Thankfully, Pastor Jamie was a great leader and humble man. He surrounded himself with great people. This allows us to not have the kind of crisis that could otherwise ensue. Pastor Dave and I agree that Sutton Turner should function as our highest-ranking "king." Sutton is new to staff, but not to ministry. He is a former executive pastor of a large church. Educationally, he is a graduate of Texas A&M, the SMU Cox School of Business, and Harvard Business School. Professionally, he has recently served as the CEO of a company that has nearly 1,600 employees. Prior to that he served as the CEO of another company that under his leadership grew from 0 to 500 employees in the first year. He and his family moved to Seattle sensing a call to serve at Mars Hill, and we believe he is a gift from God to us for our future. He is currently well into the eldership process so be in prayer for that as well as his many duties at the church. [emphasis added]
So it would seem that while Turner was promoted with gusto by the top dogs at Mars Hill at his arrival subsequent documents reveal that he was not very warmly received and he found his role as #1 King to be problematic in terms of relating to people already in the culture. We know now that there was a practically catastrophic "season" of terminations and layoffs in the year and ahalf after Turner joined.
As we now know, Tripp ended up articulating a concern that Turner was not helpful for Driscoll:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/nine-current-mars-hill-pastors-tell-mark-driscoll-step-down.html?paging=off
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/08/Concerns-and-Critical-Information-for-the-Elders-of-Mars-Hill-Church.pdf
“Sutton is fundamentally unhelpful for Mark. Sutton plays to all of Mark’s weaknesses and none of Mark’s strengths.” He pleaded with them saying that what Mark needs in an Executive Pastor is a “55 year-old seasoned godly man who watches over Mark’s soul as he administrates the church, and who can pull Mark into a room and say ‘you can’t do that in a meeting’ and you need to call another meeting and ask for forgiveness from the people you just spoke to. He doesn’t need a man who is his trigger man.” He made it clear that Sutton lacks the emotional and spiritual maturity to be where he is at in leadership.
So it would seem, in sum, that when mars Hill leadership was promoting its new "king" in Sutton Turner the leaders had managed to invoke a patina of plausibility for three types of leaders without having bothered to conduct themselves in the appointment of those leaders in a way that could be squared with the most basic instructions about how to NOT appoint them.
Sure, there were those in Mars HIll who believed that appointing leaders from inside led to conflicts of interest and problems ... but the irony we've noted here at Wenatchee The Hatchet was that as Turner redesigned the governance of Mars Hill it led to a Board that had a number of the same guys who played key advisory roles in the formulation of the 2007-era governance that Turner came to view as so problematic.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/04/sutton-turner-post-good-decisions-made_21.html
What neither Sutton Turner nor Justin Dean seemed able to realize ... perhaps because they were outsiders brought in to a culture they didn't understand, was that the guys who ended up on the BoAA became a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kind of board. Larry and Michael were still around and still ended up in advisory roles. So, ironically perhaps, Turner's redesigned board came to embody a board that Tripp said, by its very nature of being just outsiders who weren't part of the church Mars Hill itself any longer, could not do its job.
So ... well it might be said that not only was Turner an outsider who was made "king" over Mars Hill but that the board of advisors and accountability could be described as kings who ruled from a distance.
Showing posts with label prophets priests and kings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prophets priests and kings. Show all posts
Monday, May 02, 2016
Monday, February 29, 2016
Shane Idleman's piece at Christian Post from 2-23-2016 in contrast to an interview with Dave Bruskas from 2-8-2016
Proverbs 27:17 NIV
Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears
is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.
It has been fascinating to read with some regularity in the last year and a half who has been willing to sound off on what took place at Mars Hill. While some have noted that bloggers have deigned to write about things going on who never attended a service or were even a member, it has hardly stopped outlets like the Christian Post from letting people do precisely that. There wasn't necessarily a complaint from those who have talked about "bloggers" when pastors who may have never set foot in Mars Hill decide to do guest pieces for the Christian Post, was there? Perhaps there was.
Well, let's take a relatively recent piece by Shane Idleman for the Christian post. It may be provided as a case study for when a pastor who has no clear or obvious connection to the history of Mars Hill does what many a pastor is tempted to do, sound off in abstractions about a recent event that may or may not have any discernible connection to the soapbox points.
In general I find it impossible to take seriously articles in which numbered lessons are provided that we can learn from some recent event. All too often it can seem that the lessons to be learned were axioms the author was going to lay on the reader anyway regardless of the month's headlines.
http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/55246-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-pastor-mark-driscoll-s-return
and a variant ...
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mark-driscoll-s-return-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-church-planting-pastors-157938/
...
By Shane Idleman , CP Guest Contributor
February 23, 2016|7:40 am
...
In my case, I was allowed to make the most of my mistakes in the secular world before planting a church at age 41. Mark Driscoll was not afforded this luxury — he entered the pulpit in his 20s and had to work through anger, pride and control (by the way, most church planters struggle with these traits, myself included).
I'm not defending, or criticizing, I don't have enough information to truly speak to the issues on either side [emphasis added], but I want to remind all of us that Christians are fallible and make mistakes. We should consider the total portrait of one's life, character and ministry and evaluate on that basis.
A few poorly chosen statements, angry outbursts or controlling decisions made over the course of many years shouldn't define a person. One's life and character speak volumes as to the sincerity of his or her ministry. We should extend to others the same grace that we desire and be patient with others.
...
http://audio.calvaryabq.org/static/morning/morning_20160208.mp3
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-morning-invasion/id1074069431
Dave Bruskas
01:48:45
...
It was very much like a death and I just want to say, right off the top, I'm so sorry, and I know that what happened at Mars Hill hurt so many people and a lot of people are disillusioned today about church. I know a lot of people left Mars Hill in Albuquerque and some found other churches, which we're really thankful for. There are some great churches in Albuquerque so we're certainly sorry that people aren't at North Church that have left but we're glad that they've found places. But I'm really concerned for the people that have just become disillusioned with church and moved on and I want those folks to know that I am so sorry.
What a lot of people don't know, just reading the internet and looking at other perspectives, is that the heart of the brokenness at Mars Hill was a leadership culture that was broken. And was really about leaders not learning how to do ministry the right way [emphasis added] and in a broken way. It certainly hurt so many people. So I am terribly sorry to people who aren't in church right now, who are wounded and hurt, who are without church. And I'm really sorry for people in Albuquerque that were part of other churches who felt the name of Jesus was being dragged through the mud because of what happened at Mars Hill. ...
So by Dave Bruskas' account the death of Mars Hill was severely damaging to a lot of people to whom he wanted to say sorry. Bruskas also described Mars Hill as dying primarily because its leadership culture was broken. These were people who had not learned how to do ministry the right way and did ministry in a broken way. Now you are free to dissent from Bruskas' account or have doubts about his sincerity but what even Bruskas considers beyond dispute at this point is that Mars Hill died because of a leadership culture that had become so toxic the death of Mars Hill was, as we've all seen, pretty much inescapable.
Ironically, if Idleman wanted to make a point that Christians shouldn't read blogs or indulge "critical" statements about church leaders he may have picked the wrong case study. Bruskas' description of how and why Mars Hill died is surprisingly congruent with Wenatchee The Hatchet's longstanding conviction that while there have been plenty of sincere and faithful Christians at Mars Hill who wanted to be a positive influence within the Puget Sound area the leadership culture had grown too toxic and dangerous for the institution known as Mars Hill Church to end up being a healthy institution or culture.
Compared to Mark and Grace Driscoll in 2016 thus far, at least, Bruskas is willing to admit he was a pastor at Mars Hill.
POSTSCRIPT 03-03-2016
For those who read the 42-page complaint this week, Bruskas is listed among non-party co-conspirators.
Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears
is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.
It has been fascinating to read with some regularity in the last year and a half who has been willing to sound off on what took place at Mars Hill. While some have noted that bloggers have deigned to write about things going on who never attended a service or were even a member, it has hardly stopped outlets like the Christian Post from letting people do precisely that. There wasn't necessarily a complaint from those who have talked about "bloggers" when pastors who may have never set foot in Mars Hill decide to do guest pieces for the Christian Post, was there? Perhaps there was.
Well, let's take a relatively recent piece by Shane Idleman for the Christian post. It may be provided as a case study for when a pastor who has no clear or obvious connection to the history of Mars Hill does what many a pastor is tempted to do, sound off in abstractions about a recent event that may or may not have any discernible connection to the soapbox points.
In general I find it impossible to take seriously articles in which numbered lessons are provided that we can learn from some recent event. All too often it can seem that the lessons to be learned were axioms the author was going to lay on the reader anyway regardless of the month's headlines.
http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/55246-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-pastor-mark-driscoll-s-return
and a variant ...
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mark-driscoll-s-return-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-church-planting-pastors-157938/
...
By Shane Idleman , CP Guest Contributor
February 23, 2016|7:40 am
...
In my case, I was allowed to make the most of my mistakes in the secular world before planting a church at age 41. Mark Driscoll was not afforded this luxury — he entered the pulpit in his 20s and had to work through anger, pride and control (by the way, most church planters struggle with these traits, myself included).
I'm not defending, or criticizing, I don't have enough information to truly speak to the issues on either side [emphasis added], but I want to remind all of us that Christians are fallible and make mistakes. We should consider the total portrait of one's life, character and ministry and evaluate on that basis.
A few poorly chosen statements, angry outbursts or controlling decisions made over the course of many years shouldn't define a person. One's life and character speak volumes as to the sincerity of his or her ministry. We should extend to others the same grace that we desire and be patient with others.
...
I am deeply saddened by the spiritual condition of many Christians. We love to be armchair quarterbacks and diss pastors and Christian leaders, yet we have no idea of the demands they encounter and the pain they feel. Our sinful tendency is to pull others down. We may think that somehow this makes us look better.
If we are truly concerned about the body of Christ, we will hold our tongue. Self-righteousness has no place here. But I'm not referring to sweeping corruption and deception in the church under the rug. Wisdom is needed here.
and ... sadly not on display. No one who was heeding the advice in the way it seems to have been intended could have, with much integrity, have both written and submitted that piece to the Christian Post for publication. Even if Idleman were someone with whom Driscoll himself had shared a meal at some point that wouldn't obviate the go-to-verse for so many Christians, Proverbs 18:17. As it stands, the foolishness of the entire post announces itself to a person who has any familiarity with Proverbs. If you can't speak to the facts of any of the sides who participated in the history of Mars Hill then it's foolish to decide to use Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll as an occasion to cycle through content that doesn't need a news peg. Those sorts of pious bromides don't need news pegs anyway.
If Idleman missed the stretch of later 2013 to early 2014 perhaps he missed the plagiarism controversy or the Result Source controversy. Or perhaps Idleman wasn't aware of Joyful Exiles or Repentant Pastors or Tripp's comments that were made available for public consideration about Mars Hill having the most abusive ministry culture he'd ever seen. Perhaps he hadn't noticed in 2015 that former executive elder Sutton Turner remarked on how he objected to Result Source but signed it anyway? But, as previously noted, the kind of piece Idleman opted to write is the kind that can be plugged in for any suitable occasion. It isn't necessary to know any of the details or even the generalities of what happened. If anything it's probably preferable to not know much at all so as to have a reason to publish something that, were a person to know more of the situation at hand, might otherwise seem reckless, like grabbing the ears of a dog as you're happening to walk by it.
By contrast, earlier in February 2016 there was a sprawling podcast interview that featured none other than former executive elder of Mars Hill Dave Bruskas. You'll have to skip way out to nearly two hours into the podcast but ...
http://audio.calvaryabq.org/static/morning/morning_20160208.mp3
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-morning-invasion/id1074069431
Dave Bruskas
01:48:45
...
It was very much like a death and I just want to say, right off the top, I'm so sorry, and I know that what happened at Mars Hill hurt so many people and a lot of people are disillusioned today about church. I know a lot of people left Mars Hill in Albuquerque and some found other churches, which we're really thankful for. There are some great churches in Albuquerque so we're certainly sorry that people aren't at North Church that have left but we're glad that they've found places. But I'm really concerned for the people that have just become disillusioned with church and moved on and I want those folks to know that I am so sorry.
What a lot of people don't know, just reading the internet and looking at other perspectives, is that the heart of the brokenness at Mars Hill was a leadership culture that was broken. And was really about leaders not learning how to do ministry the right way [emphasis added] and in a broken way. It certainly hurt so many people. So I am terribly sorry to people who aren't in church right now, who are wounded and hurt, who are without church. And I'm really sorry for people in Albuquerque that were part of other churches who felt the name of Jesus was being dragged through the mud because of what happened at Mars Hill. ...
So by Dave Bruskas' account the death of Mars Hill was severely damaging to a lot of people to whom he wanted to say sorry. Bruskas also described Mars Hill as dying primarily because its leadership culture was broken. These were people who had not learned how to do ministry the right way and did ministry in a broken way. Now you are free to dissent from Bruskas' account or have doubts about his sincerity but what even Bruskas considers beyond dispute at this point is that Mars Hill died because of a leadership culture that had become so toxic the death of Mars Hill was, as we've all seen, pretty much inescapable.
Ironically, if Idleman wanted to make a point that Christians shouldn't read blogs or indulge "critical" statements about church leaders he may have picked the wrong case study. Bruskas' description of how and why Mars Hill died is surprisingly congruent with Wenatchee The Hatchet's longstanding conviction that while there have been plenty of sincere and faithful Christians at Mars Hill who wanted to be a positive influence within the Puget Sound area the leadership culture had grown too toxic and dangerous for the institution known as Mars Hill Church to end up being a healthy institution or culture.
Compared to Mark and Grace Driscoll in 2016 thus far, at least, Bruskas is willing to admit he was a pastor at Mars Hill.
POSTSCRIPT 03-03-2016
For those who read the 42-page complaint this week, Bruskas is listed among non-party co-conspirators.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
for old time's sake, revisiting Mark Driscoll's "Do You Trust Your Pilot?"
Back on October 22, 2012 Mark Driscoll published "Do You Trust Your Pilot?" Let's revisit this meditation in light of Driscoll's resignation from eldership at Mars Hill that arrived a mere two years later.
http://resurgencecdn.com/resurgence/2012/10/22/do-you-trust-your-pilot
Do you trust your pilot?
Mark Driscoll » Church Church Leadership Wisdom
Can you remember a time when you were flying in a plane and it made a sudden turn that made you feel scared, helpless, and wondering if you could trust the pilots to get you to your destination safely? Do you remember feeling out of control, as someone else was in charge and your fate was in their hands?
Working for an organization, including a church or ministry, is kind of like a plane in flight. The senior leaders are up front getting data from private channels and have a perspective out the windshield that no one else has. Most people on the proverbial plane are going about their lives without considering the competency of the pilots' leading, until there is a hard turn and they feel it.
A commercial pilot in our church explained these turns as “bank angles” where one wing stoops down. He said that the response of the passengers directly correlates to the degree of the turn. For example:
25–30 degrees: 1.1–1.2 g-force on the body, most people won't feel a thing.
45 degrees: 1.5 g-force, people start to feel it.
60 degrees: 2-2.5 g-force, people really feel it and start to freak out.
70–80 degrees: Around 5 g-force, people start getting tunnel vision as the blood rushes out of their eyes.
Ideally, an organization makes as many 25–30 degree turns as possible. If so, there can be ongoing changes and course corrections without people freaking out and panicking, running through the proverbial cabin. But, sometimes a really hard turn simply has to be made. Those on the plane usually don’t understand why, because they neither have the data nor see the reality that's confronting the pilots flying the plane. Those on the plane have five basic options on how they will respond when the organizational plane makes a hard-banked angle turn:
1. Jump out of the plane
Stand up, freak out, make a scene, grab a parachute, and jump out of the plane with your résumé in hand hoping to land a job somewhere else. If you are really freaked out and negative, you can try and take as many passengers with you as possible, which is in your mind some kind of heroic act.
Couldn't it be said that Mark Driscoll himself jumped out of the plane, grabbed a parachute, and has a resume in hand with consideration of what he may do elsewhere? What happens if the pilot jumps out of the plane? Can you trust the pilot then?
2. Panic
Just absolutely melt down. Get anxious, sweaty, angry, cry, cause a big fuss, get everyone worked into a frenzy, pretend you know what is going on, stress yourself out, and just fall apart.
Sounds like "The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Anxiety" where Driscoll described himself being like this.
3. Storm the cabin
Decide that you know what is really going on and that you are a better pilot, try and get some other passengers to agree with you, form a team, and try to storm the cabin and take over the plane with you as the new captain, saving everyone from the fiery doom you are certain is imminent.
4. Trash the pilots after the plane arrives at its destination safely
Assume the worst, that the pilots are incompetent, uncaring, unloving, drunks, dangerous, thrill seekers, asleep at the wheel, etc. This can be mumbling quietly to those around you, talking loudly to make a scene, confronting the pilots on your way out, cussing someone out at the service desk, writing a nasty letter to headquarters, or posting your critiques online in a flame-throwing exercise.
5. Trust the pilots
Assume that they have way more data and training than you. Assume they see stuff out of their window you don’t see out of yours. Assume they did the right thing, even if you are wearing your drink, your luggage came flying out of the overhead bin, and you need to buy new underwear to replace the ones you were wearing. Just maybe the pilots saved your life and spared you from a less disruptive turn that would have ended in a fiery crash you never saw coming.
It all comes down to trust. If you don’t trust your pilots, then you will jump, panic, storm, or trash.
Who is most likely to trust the pilots? Frequent fliers, those who have been on board long enough to have survived hard banked turns before. And former pilots who have themselves sat in the cockpit of an organization and had to make the same kind of tough decisions.
Who is least likely to trust the pilots? First-time fliers, those who are new to leadership and/or new to the organization and subsequently lack the experience to simply buckle up and ride it out. Also fans of flying who have studied flight and/or visited the cockpit to peer over the pilots' shoulder enough to maintain an illusion that they know how to fly and could do a better job themselves, even though they have no hours in the pilots' chair.
Pray for your pilot(s) and to the Pilot
Yes, a smooth flight is always ideal. But, since the occasional smooth flight remains smooth until the plane explodes into a mountain, some occasional turbulence through uncomfortable and terrifying airspace is a much better option. So, pray for your pilot(s) and to the Pilot whose sovereign hand is ultimately on the wheel.
Seeing as Driscoll gave himself his own pilot's license by ordaining himself, and given that he jumped out of a plane that seems to have momentarily crashed into the sea in a year of dissolution, the question of whether or not to trust the pilot, if the pilot is Mark Driscoll, would seem in many ways settled. He voluntarily quit being a pastor, so he's not even a licensed pilot anymore these days, is he? If the plane that is Mars Hill survives the landing it won't be because of anything Mark Driscoll did as its pilot.
http://resurgencecdn.com/resurgence/2012/10/22/do-you-trust-your-pilot
Do you trust your pilot?
Mark Driscoll » Church Church Leadership Wisdom
Can you remember a time when you were flying in a plane and it made a sudden turn that made you feel scared, helpless, and wondering if you could trust the pilots to get you to your destination safely? Do you remember feeling out of control, as someone else was in charge and your fate was in their hands?
Working for an organization, including a church or ministry, is kind of like a plane in flight. The senior leaders are up front getting data from private channels and have a perspective out the windshield that no one else has. Most people on the proverbial plane are going about their lives without considering the competency of the pilots' leading, until there is a hard turn and they feel it.
A commercial pilot in our church explained these turns as “bank angles” where one wing stoops down. He said that the response of the passengers directly correlates to the degree of the turn. For example:
25–30 degrees: 1.1–1.2 g-force on the body, most people won't feel a thing.
45 degrees: 1.5 g-force, people start to feel it.
60 degrees: 2-2.5 g-force, people really feel it and start to freak out.
70–80 degrees: Around 5 g-force, people start getting tunnel vision as the blood rushes out of their eyes.
Ideally, an organization makes as many 25–30 degree turns as possible. If so, there can be ongoing changes and course corrections without people freaking out and panicking, running through the proverbial cabin. But, sometimes a really hard turn simply has to be made. Those on the plane usually don’t understand why, because they neither have the data nor see the reality that's confronting the pilots flying the plane. Those on the plane have five basic options on how they will respond when the organizational plane makes a hard-banked angle turn:
1. Jump out of the plane
Stand up, freak out, make a scene, grab a parachute, and jump out of the plane with your résumé in hand hoping to land a job somewhere else. If you are really freaked out and negative, you can try and take as many passengers with you as possible, which is in your mind some kind of heroic act.
Couldn't it be said that Mark Driscoll himself jumped out of the plane, grabbed a parachute, and has a resume in hand with consideration of what he may do elsewhere? What happens if the pilot jumps out of the plane? Can you trust the pilot then?
2. Panic
Just absolutely melt down. Get anxious, sweaty, angry, cry, cause a big fuss, get everyone worked into a frenzy, pretend you know what is going on, stress yourself out, and just fall apart.
Sounds like "The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Anxiety" where Driscoll described himself being like this.
3. Storm the cabin
Decide that you know what is really going on and that you are a better pilot, try and get some other passengers to agree with you, form a team, and try to storm the cabin and take over the plane with you as the new captain, saving everyone from the fiery doom you are certain is imminent.
4. Trash the pilots after the plane arrives at its destination safely
Assume the worst, that the pilots are incompetent, uncaring, unloving, drunks, dangerous, thrill seekers, asleep at the wheel, etc. This can be mumbling quietly to those around you, talking loudly to make a scene, confronting the pilots on your way out, cussing someone out at the service desk, writing a nasty letter to headquarters, or posting your critiques online in a flame-throwing exercise.
5. Trust the pilots
Assume that they have way more data and training than you. Assume they see stuff out of their window you don’t see out of yours. Assume they did the right thing, even if you are wearing your drink, your luggage came flying out of the overhead bin, and you need to buy new underwear to replace the ones you were wearing. Just maybe the pilots saved your life and spared you from a less disruptive turn that would have ended in a fiery crash you never saw coming.
It all comes down to trust. If you don’t trust your pilots, then you will jump, panic, storm, or trash.
Who is most likely to trust the pilots? Frequent fliers, those who have been on board long enough to have survived hard banked turns before. And former pilots who have themselves sat in the cockpit of an organization and had to make the same kind of tough decisions.
Who is least likely to trust the pilots? First-time fliers, those who are new to leadership and/or new to the organization and subsequently lack the experience to simply buckle up and ride it out. Also fans of flying who have studied flight and/or visited the cockpit to peer over the pilots' shoulder enough to maintain an illusion that they know how to fly and could do a better job themselves, even though they have no hours in the pilots' chair.
Pray for your pilot(s) and to the Pilot
Yes, a smooth flight is always ideal. But, since the occasional smooth flight remains smooth until the plane explodes into a mountain, some occasional turbulence through uncomfortable and terrifying airspace is a much better option. So, pray for your pilot(s) and to the Pilot whose sovereign hand is ultimately on the wheel.
Seeing as Driscoll gave himself his own pilot's license by ordaining himself, and given that he jumped out of a plane that seems to have momentarily crashed into the sea in a year of dissolution, the question of whether or not to trust the pilot, if the pilot is Mark Driscoll, would seem in many ways settled. He voluntarily quit being a pastor, so he's not even a licensed pilot anymore these days, is he? If the plane that is Mars Hill survives the landing it won't be because of anything Mark Driscoll did as its pilot.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
3-17-15 Sutton Turner blog post revisits his history in ministry, WtH revisits the accounts of Michael Van Skaik and Mark Driscoll about Turner and a Paul Tripp statement
First thing to note, Sutton Turner's got a website up, and the second thing to note is the biography covers a decent amount of material previously available at MH sites and to a lesser extent discussed here at Wenatchee The Hatchet but the key thing is ...
http://investyourgifts.com/#Sutton
Notice Regarding Monetary Gifts:
Turner wants you to give to the local church and after that to support New Covenant Foundation or any other organizations you feel led to give to. Turner's also not going to start a 501(c)3 organization. Why mention that? Oh ... well, somebody is soliciting gifts to be given through an application-pending registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
http://markdriscoll.org/
http://markdriscoll.org/give
Your tax-deductible gift helps us host and distribute Pastor Mark Driscoll’s past and future Bible teaching and resources. Enter any amount below.
You can also send donations via mail to:
Learning for Living is an application-pending registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible in full or in part.
But that person is obviously not Sutton Turner. What the status of Learning for Living's registration is might be useful information to have, and when the corporation known as Mars Hill Church finally expires at the end of 2015 would it not have to designate its assets to another 501(c)3? If that's the case then it seems we know that whatever 501(c)3 gets the assets Mars Hill might have it looks like it won't have Turner's names attached to it.
Now, we get to the recent post from Sutton Turner. On March 17, 2015 former executive elder of Mars Hill Church Sutton Turner posted a post.
http://investyourgifts.com/an-executive-pastor-calling/
...
At one point, one of the pastors asked if I would take a look at the financial books. The church was growing like crazy, attendance was up into the thousands, and everything appeared healthy on the outside. I reviewed the data and, to my absolute shock, discovered that the church was in significant trouble. The staff was huge and we only had sixty days of cash left. Operations were unsustainable, and it was only a matter of time before the church would fail to make payroll.
I had to tell Pastor Joe that he would be up against a huge mess unless somebody made some changes very, very fast. I was completely shocked when Pastor Joe turned to me and said that I was the man for the job.
Turner's story in his own words has seemed fairly consistent, which is why it's interesting that Sutton Turner's words as mediated by the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability presented a bit of a question. Here's how Michael Van Skaik related the resignation of asdf
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/19/sutton-turners-status-at-mars-hill-church-uncertain/
and
https://marshill.com/2014/09/19/the-weekly-9-19-14
UPDATE FROM THE BOAA
Dear Mars Hill,
Earlier this month Pastor Sutton Turner informed our board of his intention to resign from his current staff and elder position. His personal decision is a sober acknowledgement that it would not be financially feasible for him to stay on staff as the church rightsizes itself, and secondly, not emotionally prudent to subject his family to what has been an ongoing season of personal attacks. We want to be clear: there are no disqualifying factors related to his decision.
Sutton put it this way: “Since 2007, Pastor Mark has impacted my life in a significant way. I am thankful to call him my brother, my pastor, and my friend. When I came to Mars Hill in 2011, my plan was to be here for a year, get theologically trained, and focus on the adoption of my son before entering back into the business world. Three and a half years later, I have been able to serve a church that I love as a staff member, but it is now time that I transition off of staff and return to the business world.”
But compare Van Skaik's account to Mark Driscoll's introductions for Sutton Turner.
http://marshill.com/2011/11/23/introducing-pastor-sutton-turner
By: Pastor Mark Driscoll
Posted: Nov 23, 2011
Earlier this year, the Turner family moved around the world just to be a part of Mars Hill Church. They’d been listening to the podcast for many years, and when the opportunity arose to join the ministry, Sutton left a lucrative job in the Middle East to use his gifts to serve the church. [emphasis added]
Pastor Sutton’s experience has already been a huge benefit. He has a degree from Harvard Business School, led multibillion-dollar organizations, and even worked as an executive pastor for a number of years at a large church in Texas. More importantly, he is a godly man with a delightful family.
By God’s grace, Mars Hill Church is in an amazing season of growth. With that comes significantly more complexities, however. We need help and we’ve been searching for a leader of Sutton’s caliber for awhile. God is faithful and brought the right man at the right time.
and from the letters announcing Jamie Munson's resignation
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
Pastor Dave and I both believe Pastor Scott is the best choice for this role in this season. Pastor Scott [Thomas] has been very clear in his love and commitment to Mars Hill and has said he will gladly serve wherever he is needed, which we deeply appreciate. Administratively, Pastor Jamie was our senior "king" and his departure requires very competent leadership to cover his many responsibilities. Thankfully, Pastor Jamie was a great leader and humble man. He surrounded himself with great people. This allows us to not have the kind of crisis that could otherwise ensue. Pastor Dave and I agree that Sutton Turner should function as our highest-ranking "king." Sutton is new to staff, but not to ministry. He is a former executive pastor of a large church. Educationally, he is a graduate of Texas A&M, the SMU Cox School of Business, and Harvard Business School. Professionally, he has recently served as the CEO of a company that has nearly 1,600 employees. Prior to that he served as the CEO of another company that under his leadership grew from 0 to 500 employees in the first year. He and his family moved to Seattle sensing a call to serve at Mars Hill, and we believe he is a gift from God to us for our future. He is currently well into the eldership process so be in prayer for that as well as his many duties at the church. [emphasis added]
In the last year some things have come to light, such as the following quote attributed to Paul Tripp in a letter signed by nine Mars Hill elders back in 2014:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/nine-current-mars-hill-pastors-tell-mark-driscoll-step-down.html?paging=off
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/08/Concerns-and-Critical-Information-for-the-Elders-of-Mars-Hill-Church.pdf
“Sutton is fundamentally unhelpful for Mark. Sutton plays to all of Mark’s weaknesses and none of Mark’s strengths.” He pleaded with them saying that what Mark needs in an Executive Pastor is a “55 year-old seasoned godly man who watches over Mark’s soul as he administrates the church, and who can pull Mark into a room and say ‘you can’t do that in a meeting’ and you need to call another meeting and ask for forgiveness from the people you just spoke to. He doesn’t need a man who is his trigger man.” He made it clear that Sutton lacks the emotional and spiritual maturity to be where he is at in leadership.
Careful students of the biblical literature will have to bear in mind that a direct calling is not necessarily an indication of permament or pervasive gifting for a particular office. As Mark Driscoll himself used to say, even Jesus picked one bad guy in the dozen. And to stick with the theme of kings a bit, the first king anointed over Israel was Saul, who turned out to be a pretty bad egg. We have to be cautious about the way in which some who describe themselves as leaders toss around the language of being called or having had a divine commission for a particular role.
All that said, Sutton Turner's account of himself throughout the history of Mars Hill has seemed fairly consistent. The same is much less easily said about things said by Michael Van Skaik and Mark Driscoll in connection to Turner's narrative.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/comparing-michael-van-skaiks-quote-of.html
There were some questions here at WtH in the past about whether, in light of the quote attributed to him by Michael Van Skaik, Sutton Turner had actually planned to be an elder at Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-narrative-question-when-i-came-to.html
For folks who want an overview of Turner's career before and during Mars Hill:
For the rest of the review:
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 2a Mission Housing Management, LLC January 2004 to December 2006
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 2b Mission Investors I. G. P, Inc.
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 3 CHCC aka Cimmaron Hills Country Club (?) February 2004 to January 2006 things are fuzzier here, readers welcome to contribute
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 4 Celebration Church Austin November 2006 to August 2008
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 5 Khidmah, LLC May 2008 to July 2010
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 6 Waseef. Barwa Real Estate Group June 2010 to May 2011
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 7 Mars Hill Church April 2011 to present
http://investyourgifts.com/#Sutton
Notice Regarding Monetary Gifts:
Sutton Turner is not accepting any personal donations or gifts through this website. Please join Sutton in financially supporting your local church and then over and above your tithe supporting New Covenant Foundation and Compassion International, or any other non-profit organization which the Lord leads you. Turner has not started nor is he starting a 501(c)3 organization.
Turner wants you to give to the local church and after that to support New Covenant Foundation or any other organizations you feel led to give to. Turner's also not going to start a 501(c)3 organization. Why mention that? Oh ... well, somebody is soliciting gifts to be given through an application-pending registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
http://markdriscoll.org/
http://markdriscoll.org/give
Your tax-deductible gift helps us host and distribute Pastor Mark Driscoll’s past and future Bible teaching and resources. Enter any amount below.
You can also send donations via mail to:
Learning For Living
23632 HWY 99 Suite F 517
Edmonds WA 98026
23632 HWY 99 Suite F 517
Edmonds WA 98026
Learning for Living is an application-pending registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible in full or in part.
But that person is obviously not Sutton Turner. What the status of Learning for Living's registration is might be useful information to have, and when the corporation known as Mars Hill Church finally expires at the end of 2015 would it not have to designate its assets to another 501(c)3? If that's the case then it seems we know that whatever 501(c)3 gets the assets Mars Hill might have it looks like it won't have Turner's names attached to it.
Now, we get to the recent post from Sutton Turner. On March 17, 2015 former executive elder of Mars Hill Church Sutton Turner posted a post.
http://investyourgifts.com/an-executive-pastor-calling/
...
At one point, one of the pastors asked if I would take a look at the financial books. The church was growing like crazy, attendance was up into the thousands, and everything appeared healthy on the outside. I reviewed the data and, to my absolute shock, discovered that the church was in significant trouble. The staff was huge and we only had sixty days of cash left. Operations were unsustainable, and it was only a matter of time before the church would fail to make payroll.
I had to tell Pastor Joe that he would be up against a huge mess unless somebody made some changes very, very fast. I was completely shocked when Pastor Joe turned to me and said that I was the man for the job.
Jesus made ruins of the life I had known. He changed my heart, my priorities, my goals, and my direction.The financial bind that threatened my church wasn’t the result of any malicious activity or misappropriation. The guy in charge of operations simply didn’t know how to run a business.
Turner's story in his own words has seemed fairly consistent, which is why it's interesting that Sutton Turner's words as mediated by the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability presented a bit of a question. Here's how Michael Van Skaik related the resignation of asdf
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/19/sutton-turners-status-at-mars-hill-church-uncertain/
and
https://marshill.com/2014/09/19/the-weekly-9-19-14
UPDATE FROM THE BOAA
Dear Mars Hill,
Earlier this month Pastor Sutton Turner informed our board of his intention to resign from his current staff and elder position. His personal decision is a sober acknowledgement that it would not be financially feasible for him to stay on staff as the church rightsizes itself, and secondly, not emotionally prudent to subject his family to what has been an ongoing season of personal attacks. We want to be clear: there are no disqualifying factors related to his decision.
Sutton put it this way: “Since 2007, Pastor Mark has impacted my life in a significant way. I am thankful to call him my brother, my pastor, and my friend. When I came to Mars Hill in 2011, my plan was to be here for a year, get theologically trained, and focus on the adoption of my son before entering back into the business world. Three and a half years later, I have been able to serve a church that I love as a staff member, but it is now time that I transition off of staff and return to the business world.”
But compare Van Skaik's account to Mark Driscoll's introductions for Sutton Turner.
http://marshill.com/2011/11/23/introducing-pastor-sutton-turner
By: Pastor Mark Driscoll
Posted: Nov 23, 2011
Earlier this year, the Turner family moved around the world just to be a part of Mars Hill Church. They’d been listening to the podcast for many years, and when the opportunity arose to join the ministry, Sutton left a lucrative job in the Middle East to use his gifts to serve the church. [emphasis added]
Pastor Sutton’s experience has already been a huge benefit. He has a degree from Harvard Business School, led multibillion-dollar organizations, and even worked as an executive pastor for a number of years at a large church in Texas. More importantly, he is a godly man with a delightful family.
By God’s grace, Mars Hill Church is in an amazing season of growth. With that comes significantly more complexities, however. We need help and we’ve been searching for a leader of Sutton’s caliber for awhile. God is faithful and brought the right man at the right time.
and from the letters announcing Jamie Munson's resignation
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
Pastor Dave and I both believe Pastor Scott is the best choice for this role in this season. Pastor Scott [Thomas] has been very clear in his love and commitment to Mars Hill and has said he will gladly serve wherever he is needed, which we deeply appreciate. Administratively, Pastor Jamie was our senior "king" and his departure requires very competent leadership to cover his many responsibilities. Thankfully, Pastor Jamie was a great leader and humble man. He surrounded himself with great people. This allows us to not have the kind of crisis that could otherwise ensue. Pastor Dave and I agree that Sutton Turner should function as our highest-ranking "king." Sutton is new to staff, but not to ministry. He is a former executive pastor of a large church. Educationally, he is a graduate of Texas A&M, the SMU Cox School of Business, and Harvard Business School. Professionally, he has recently served as the CEO of a company that has nearly 1,600 employees. Prior to that he served as the CEO of another company that under his leadership grew from 0 to 500 employees in the first year. He and his family moved to Seattle sensing a call to serve at Mars Hill, and we believe he is a gift from God to us for our future. He is currently well into the eldership process so be in prayer for that as well as his many duties at the church. [emphasis added]
In the last year some things have come to light, such as the following quote attributed to Paul Tripp in a letter signed by nine Mars Hill elders back in 2014:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/nine-current-mars-hill-pastors-tell-mark-driscoll-step-down.html?paging=off
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/08/Concerns-and-Critical-Information-for-the-Elders-of-Mars-Hill-Church.pdf
“Sutton is fundamentally unhelpful for Mark. Sutton plays to all of Mark’s weaknesses and none of Mark’s strengths.” He pleaded with them saying that what Mark needs in an Executive Pastor is a “55 year-old seasoned godly man who watches over Mark’s soul as he administrates the church, and who can pull Mark into a room and say ‘you can’t do that in a meeting’ and you need to call another meeting and ask for forgiveness from the people you just spoke to. He doesn’t need a man who is his trigger man.” He made it clear that Sutton lacks the emotional and spiritual maturity to be where he is at in leadership.
Careful students of the biblical literature will have to bear in mind that a direct calling is not necessarily an indication of permament or pervasive gifting for a particular office. As Mark Driscoll himself used to say, even Jesus picked one bad guy in the dozen. And to stick with the theme of kings a bit, the first king anointed over Israel was Saul, who turned out to be a pretty bad egg. We have to be cautious about the way in which some who describe themselves as leaders toss around the language of being called or having had a divine commission for a particular role.
All that said, Sutton Turner's account of himself throughout the history of Mars Hill has seemed fairly consistent. The same is much less easily said about things said by Michael Van Skaik and Mark Driscoll in connection to Turner's narrative.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/comparing-michael-van-skaiks-quote-of.html
There were some questions here at WtH in the past about whether, in light of the quote attributed to him by Michael Van Skaik, Sutton Turner had actually planned to be an elder at Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-narrative-question-when-i-came-to.html
For folks who want an overview of Turner's career before and during Mars Hill:
For the rest of the review:
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 2a Mission Housing Management, LLC January 2004 to December 2006
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 2b Mission Investors I. G. P, Inc.
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 3 CHCC aka Cimmaron Hills Country Club (?) February 2004 to January 2006 things are fuzzier here, readers welcome to contribute
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 4 Celebration Church Austin November 2006 to August 2008
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 5 Khidmah, LLC May 2008 to July 2010
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 6 Waseef. Barwa Real Estate Group June 2010 to May 2011
a revisitation of Sutton Turner's career at one time recounted in LinkedIn, part 7 Mars Hill Church April 2011 to present
Sunday, November 30, 2014
a brief observation about the March 7, 2014 statement by the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability that presupposed conflict of interest as characteristic of MH governance
asdgasg
https://marshill.com/2014/03/07/a-note-from-our-board-of-advisors-accountability
Changes to Governance
For many years Mars Hill Church was led by a board of Elders, most of whom were in a vocational relationship with the church and thus not able to provide optimal objectivity. To eliminate conflicts of interest and set the church’s future on the best possible model of governance, a Board of Advisors and Accountability (BOAA) was established [emphasis added] to set compensation, conduct performance reviews, approve the annual budget, and hold the newly formed Executive Elders accountable in all areas of local church leadership. This model is consistent with the best practices for governance established in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability standards. Mars Hill Church joined and has been a member in good standing with the ECFA since September of 2012.
http://theresurgence.com/2008/04/07/question-and-answer-with-mark-driscoll-video
http://www.theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-27_video_tnc_qa
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/qa-with-mark-driscoll/
(starts at 00:31:52)
Q. How do you lead staff who are your best friends?Do you want the honest answer or should I punt?
... You can't. ... you can't.
I hate to tell you that. ... Deep down in your gut you know if you're best friends and someone works for you that changes the relationship. Right? Because you can fire them. Of course you want to be friends with your elders and the people you work with. I mean, we're a church. I mean you wanna, you NEED to love the people you work with. But one of the hardest things, and only the lead guy gets this. Nobody else on staff even understands what I'm talking about. When you're the lead guy you wear multiple hats. Say it's someone who works with you and they're a good friend. You wear the "Hey, we're buddies" hat. We're friends. We go on vacation. We hang out. We do
dinner. We're friends.
But you also wear the "I'm your boss" hat "You need to do your job or I might have to fire you" hat, and you also wear the "I'm your pastor. I love you, care for you, and I'm looking out for your well-being" hat. Those three hats are in absolute collision. Because how do you fire your friend and then pastor them through it? Right? I mean that is very complicated. I love you, you're fired, can I pray for you? That is a very .. what are we doing? I think if you're going to have your best friends working with you they need to be somewhere else on the team but not under you or the friendship really needs to change.
And what happens is when people are your friend ... I don't think that many do this intentionally but they want you to wear whatever hat is at their best interest at the time. So they didn't do their job, they're falling down on their responsibility, and you talk to them and say, "Look, you're not getting this done." They put on the "hey buddy. Yeah, I've been kinda sick lately and my wife and I are going through a hard time." and they want the friend hat on. And as a friend you're like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, dude." But then you put your boss hat back on and you're like "Yeah, but we pay you and we need you to get the job done."
And then they want you to put the friend hat back on and keep sympathizing.
And you're totally conflicted. ...
I have very good friends in this church. I have elders that are very dear friends, but when you have to do their performance review, when you have to decide what their wage is, when you have to decide whether they get promoted, demoted or terminated it's impossible to do that because you can't wear all three hats at the same time.
First guy I fired, he was a dear friend. A godly man, no moral or doctrinal sin whatsoever, he just wasn't keeping up with what we needed him to do. And it wasn't `cause he didn't try and wasn't working hard. And he had a wonderful wife and a great family and to this day I think the world of this guy. And if my sons grew up to be like him, I'd be proud. And I'm not critical of this man at all.
But I remember sitting down at that first termination. First I put on the friend hat. I said, "I love you, I appreciate you. I value you." Then I put on the boss hat, "I'm gonna have to let you go. Here's why." And then I put on the pastor hat, "How are you feeling? How are you doing?" And he was really gracious with me and he said, "This is just the weirdest conversation I've ever had." And I said, "Me too, `cause I'm not sure what hat I'm supposed to wear."
Does that make any sense? The best thing is if you have a best friend maybe the best thing to do is not have them work with you. Or if they do have them work under someone else. And to also pursue good friendships with people outside of your church. Some of my dearest friends today are not at Mars Hill, they're also pastors of other churches. Darrin Patrick is here, Vice-President of Acts 29. I love him. He's a brother. He's the guy I call. ... He's a pastor to me, you know? Matt Chandler is here. I count as a friend. By God's Grace, C. J. Mahaney, I count as a friend. ...
Jamie Munson is head of the elder board. Jamie Munson is executive pastor. He is legal president of the organization. And for me, to be honest, it was the most freeing, liberating thing I could have dreamed of because now I don't have all that conflict of interest. I can be friends with someone but I don't have to fire them, do their performance review, and decide how much they get paid. It's just too conflicting for me." [emphasis added]
So the question is never going to be "if" there were conflicts of interest in the history of the governance of Mars Hill because the BoAA and Mark Driscoll himself have simply conceded conflicts of interest existed in their own words. The question is "what" those conflicts of interest actually were and whether or not the by-laws drafted and amended some time in later 2011 successfully dealt with whatever those conflicts of interest may have been.
This may be all the more worth considering and investigating for those who are interested in this with the corporation formally dissolving at the end of this month.
https://marshill.com/2014/03/07/a-note-from-our-board-of-advisors-accountability
Changes to Governance
For many years Mars Hill Church was led by a board of Elders, most of whom were in a vocational relationship with the church and thus not able to provide optimal objectivity. To eliminate conflicts of interest and set the church’s future on the best possible model of governance, a Board of Advisors and Accountability (BOAA) was established [emphasis added] to set compensation, conduct performance reviews, approve the annual budget, and hold the newly formed Executive Elders accountable in all areas of local church leadership. This model is consistent with the best practices for governance established in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability standards. Mars Hill Church joined and has been a member in good standing with the ECFA since September of 2012.
http://theresurgence.com/2008/04/07/question-and-answer-with-mark-driscoll-video
http://www.theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-27_video_tnc_qa
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/qa-with-mark-driscoll/
(starts at 00:31:52)
Q. How do you lead staff who are your best friends?Do you want the honest answer or should I punt?
... You can't. ... you can't.
I hate to tell you that. ... Deep down in your gut you know if you're best friends and someone works for you that changes the relationship. Right? Because you can fire them. Of course you want to be friends with your elders and the people you work with. I mean, we're a church. I mean you wanna, you NEED to love the people you work with. But one of the hardest things, and only the lead guy gets this. Nobody else on staff even understands what I'm talking about. When you're the lead guy you wear multiple hats. Say it's someone who works with you and they're a good friend. You wear the "Hey, we're buddies" hat. We're friends. We go on vacation. We hang out. We do
dinner. We're friends.
But you also wear the "I'm your boss" hat "You need to do your job or I might have to fire you" hat, and you also wear the "I'm your pastor. I love you, care for you, and I'm looking out for your well-being" hat. Those three hats are in absolute collision. Because how do you fire your friend and then pastor them through it? Right? I mean that is very complicated. I love you, you're fired, can I pray for you? That is a very .. what are we doing? I think if you're going to have your best friends working with you they need to be somewhere else on the team but not under you or the friendship really needs to change.
And what happens is when people are your friend ... I don't think that many do this intentionally but they want you to wear whatever hat is at their best interest at the time. So they didn't do their job, they're falling down on their responsibility, and you talk to them and say, "Look, you're not getting this done." They put on the "hey buddy. Yeah, I've been kinda sick lately and my wife and I are going through a hard time." and they want the friend hat on. And as a friend you're like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, dude." But then you put your boss hat back on and you're like "Yeah, but we pay you and we need you to get the job done."
And then they want you to put the friend hat back on and keep sympathizing.
And you're totally conflicted. ...
I have very good friends in this church. I have elders that are very dear friends, but when you have to do their performance review, when you have to decide what their wage is, when you have to decide whether they get promoted, demoted or terminated it's impossible to do that because you can't wear all three hats at the same time.
First guy I fired, he was a dear friend. A godly man, no moral or doctrinal sin whatsoever, he just wasn't keeping up with what we needed him to do. And it wasn't `cause he didn't try and wasn't working hard. And he had a wonderful wife and a great family and to this day I think the world of this guy. And if my sons grew up to be like him, I'd be proud. And I'm not critical of this man at all.
But I remember sitting down at that first termination. First I put on the friend hat. I said, "I love you, I appreciate you. I value you." Then I put on the boss hat, "I'm gonna have to let you go. Here's why." And then I put on the pastor hat, "How are you feeling? How are you doing?" And he was really gracious with me and he said, "This is just the weirdest conversation I've ever had." And I said, "Me too, `cause I'm not sure what hat I'm supposed to wear."
Does that make any sense? The best thing is if you have a best friend maybe the best thing to do is not have them work with you. Or if they do have them work under someone else. And to also pursue good friendships with people outside of your church. Some of my dearest friends today are not at Mars Hill, they're also pastors of other churches. Darrin Patrick is here, Vice-President of Acts 29. I love him. He's a brother. He's the guy I call. ... He's a pastor to me, you know? Matt Chandler is here. I count as a friend. By God's Grace, C. J. Mahaney, I count as a friend. ...
Jamie Munson is head of the elder board. Jamie Munson is executive pastor. He is legal president of the organization. And for me, to be honest, it was the most freeing, liberating thing I could have dreamed of because now I don't have all that conflict of interest. I can be friends with someone but I don't have to fire them, do their performance review, and decide how much they get paid. It's just too conflicting for me." [emphasis added]
So the question is never going to be "if" there were conflicts of interest in the history of the governance of Mars Hill because the BoAA and Mark Driscoll himself have simply conceded conflicts of interest existed in their own words. The question is "what" those conflicts of interest actually were and whether or not the by-laws drafted and amended some time in later 2011 successfully dealt with whatever those conflicts of interest may have been.
This may be all the more worth considering and investigating for those who are interested in this with the corporation formally dissolving at the end of this month.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Throckmorton: Jeff Venderstelt announced as teaching pastor for the Mars Hill Bellevue that's turning into Bellevue Church. a short overview of what little WtH has noted about Vanderstelt as part of Re:Train
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/11/23/bellevue-church-choose-jeff-vanderstelt-as-teaching-pastor/
Something from the start of the November 23, 2014 letter warrants comment.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/11/Praying-Together-For-Our-Lead-Pastor.pdf
November 23, 2014
Eastside, family
We have all been in prayer together for some time now concerning the eastside church we believe Jesus wants to build through us, and also specifically for God to bring forward the lead teaching pastor that he desires for that church.
In the history of Mars Hill Bellevue it's a bad start to invoke what you believe Jesus wants built or done since the Thomas Hurst letter explaining how the "we" of Mars Hill leadership was persuaded that God wanted Mars Hill Bellevue to have the International Paper Building.
http://web.archive.org/web/20131026120216/http://goodforbellevue.marshill.com/about/
capture from October 26, 2013
From the LETTER FROM PASTOR THOMAS HURST:
...
As we walk down the path God has laid out for us, we want to share with you a bit of a paradigm shift: Bellevue is now in “core group” phase.
While many churches plant with a core group of 25 people, or 250 people, Mars Hill Bellevue is currently a core group of 2,500 people. As we look ahead, the Bellevue elders and the Executive Elders are not just praying for 1,000 people, or 5,000 people on a Sunday, we’re praying for 10,000 people to worship on a Sunday at Mars Hill Bellevue…10,000 individuals whose lives are forever changed by the Gospel. To this end, we need to think, act and pray differently, starting today. If we wait until tomorrow, a year from now or three years from now when our lease is up, it will be too late.
With this in mind, we have found a site in Bellevue that meets these needs. I’m asking you to pray with us as we explore what it will take to move Mars Hill Bellevue to this new location, and how you can be a part of the mission.
The International Paper Property on 120th St.
After many months of searching and narrowing down our choices, only one building in Bellevue is available that meets the needs of the church that God is building on the Eastside. A few weeks ago we made an offer on a property in the Bel-Red corridor on 120th St. which is currently owned by the
So where Bellevue goes, you have to remember its leadership team has a history of saying this kind of stuff and having it not ... quite ... pan ... out as planned.
Now, about Venderstelt, Wenatchee The Hatchet does not know a great deal about him. The letter published by Throckmorton indicates Vanderstelt worked with Bill Clem in the launching of Doxa and Soma (though Wenatchee has previously understood Doxa to have actually been an Acts 29 plant, at least based on Mark Driscoll sermons ... so further clarification there is welcome)
What few times the name has come up in researching the history of Mars Hill would be as follows:
He's had a board role in the Acts 29 Network history
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/04/chandler-on-mars-hill-a29-was-so-kind.html
Vanderstelt, according to a Chris Blackstone ( who may be the same with a LinkedIn profile indicating studying Re:Train from 2009 to 2010), was co-teacher of a "missional practicum"
for instance:
Missional Practicum taught by Mark Driscoll, Scott Thomas, and Jeff Vanderstelt
Perhaps Vanderstelt can explain how and why the Resurgence Training Center withered on the vine after a big press roll-out in 2009? The announcement of Vanderstelt's selection seems to downplay connections to the founder of Mars Hill, perhaps for reasons too obvious to bother stating.
Vanderstelt's connections to Acts 29 affiliated people thus seems to go back as far as the founding of Doxa in 2002.
Vanderstelt was at one point "second vice-president" in the Acts 29 Network
http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/whats-a-missional-community-jeff-vanderstelt-and-the-story-of-soma/
Jeff Vanderstelt is Second Vice President of the Acts 29 Network. In 2003, he came to the Seattle area to help Bill Clem plant churches between Seattle and Tacoma. To plant Soma Communities, he went through the Acts 29 Network assessment process and became a member.
Something from the start of the November 23, 2014 letter warrants comment.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/11/Praying-Together-For-Our-Lead-Pastor.pdf
November 23, 2014
Eastside, family
We have all been in prayer together for some time now concerning the eastside church we believe Jesus wants to build through us, and also specifically for God to bring forward the lead teaching pastor that he desires for that church.
In the history of Mars Hill Bellevue it's a bad start to invoke what you believe Jesus wants built or done since the Thomas Hurst letter explaining how the "we" of Mars Hill leadership was persuaded that God wanted Mars Hill Bellevue to have the International Paper Building.
http://web.archive.org/web/20131026120216/http://goodforbellevue.marshill.com/about/
capture from October 26, 2013
From the LETTER FROM PASTOR THOMAS HURST:
...
As we walk down the path God has laid out for us, we want to share with you a bit of a paradigm shift: Bellevue is now in “core group” phase.
While many churches plant with a core group of 25 people, or 250 people, Mars Hill Bellevue is currently a core group of 2,500 people. As we look ahead, the Bellevue elders and the Executive Elders are not just praying for 1,000 people, or 5,000 people on a Sunday, we’re praying for 10,000 people to worship on a Sunday at Mars Hill Bellevue…10,000 individuals whose lives are forever changed by the Gospel. To this end, we need to think, act and pray differently, starting today. If we wait until tomorrow, a year from now or three years from now when our lease is up, it will be too late.
With this in mind, we have found a site in Bellevue that meets these needs. I’m asking you to pray with us as we explore what it will take to move Mars Hill Bellevue to this new location, and how you can be a part of the mission.
The International Paper Property on 120th St.
After many months of searching and narrowing down our choices, only one building in Bellevue is available that meets the needs of the church that God is building on the Eastside. A few weeks ago we made an offer on a property in the Bel-Red corridor on 120th St. which is currently owned by the
So where Bellevue goes, you have to remember its leadership team has a history of saying this kind of stuff and having it not ... quite ... pan ... out as planned.
Now, about Venderstelt, Wenatchee The Hatchet does not know a great deal about him. The letter published by Throckmorton indicates Vanderstelt worked with Bill Clem in the launching of Doxa and Soma (though Wenatchee has previously understood Doxa to have actually been an Acts 29 plant, at least based on Mark Driscoll sermons ... so further clarification there is welcome)
What few times the name has come up in researching the history of Mars Hill would be as follows:
He's had a board role in the Acts 29 Network history
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/04/chandler-on-mars-hill-a29-was-so-kind.html
Vanderstelt, according to a Chris Blackstone ( who may be the same with a LinkedIn profile indicating studying Re:Train from 2009 to 2010), was co-teacher of a "missional practicum"
for instance:
Missional Practicum taught by Mark Driscoll, Scott Thomas, and Jeff Vanderstelt
Perhaps Vanderstelt can explain how and why the Resurgence Training Center withered on the vine after a big press roll-out in 2009? The announcement of Vanderstelt's selection seems to downplay connections to the founder of Mars Hill, perhaps for reasons too obvious to bother stating.
Vanderstelt's connections to Acts 29 affiliated people thus seems to go back as far as the founding of Doxa in 2002.
Vanderstelt was at one point "second vice-president" in the Acts 29 Network
http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/whats-a-missional-community-jeff-vanderstelt-and-the-story-of-soma/
Jeff Vanderstelt is Second Vice President of the Acts 29 Network. In 2003, he came to the Seattle area to help Bill Clem plant churches between Seattle and Tacoma. To plant Soma Communities, he went through the Acts 29 Network assessment process and became a member.
Thursday, November 06, 2014
about Dave Bruskas' future, Mars Hill real estate past, and who has gotten what jobs after real estate was acquired
you know ... amidst word that Dave Bruskas will be interim lead while Mars Hill dissolves ...
if Bruskas goes back to New Mexico we might as well raise a question about what Bruskas has ever done in the history of Mars Hill. Was he the one who got City on a Hill to Mars Hill in 2009? Then he became an executive elder? You know, that's gotten Wenatchee The Hatchet thinking.
Let's review elder roles and real estate for a bit.
Paradox, purchased and renovated by Lief Moi in the late 1990s.
Let's skip ahead to Ballard, which was acquired in 2002.
The corporate headquarters was acquired in 2005.
West Seattle was acquired in 2006 and that acquisition came about through the signatures of Bill Clem and James Noriega. By Mark Driscoll's account he'd wanted that piece of real estate for ten years and Clem had been tending a wife who was dying of ovarian cancer, while Noriega had come to Christ in 1999 and in 2006 was a newlywed on his second marriage and had a press-documented history of felonies. For some reason Noriega was greenlit for eldership at Mars Hill when he may not have been ready. Then again, he was already an elder at Doxa in 2006 and that should raise questions on who was in charge of church planting scout activity in the formative years of Acts 29. That would have been Mark Driscoll in 2001.
Bill Clem ended up being lead pastor at Mars Hill Ballard.
James Noriega was put on the Board of Directors and given co-leadership of what became recovery ministries and Redemption Groups.
Tim Beltz was Chief Operations Officer at CRISTA ministries during the period when Mark Driscoll boasted Mars Hill was able to use Schirmer Auditorium completely free of charge. Precisely how this arrangement was brokered has never been explained but it does raise a question about what happened. Did CRISTA do everything with respect to Mars Hill as a write-off? It might have been possible but Tim Beltz was installed as an executive elder almost immediately after the 2007 by-laws were passed and Beltz was part of the executive elder team until about 2010 when, for no reasons known at hand, stopped being an executive elder. Under the pre-2007 bylaws Beltz qualifications for eldership might have been spotty but after the bylaws got voted through he could be instantly assimilated to the highest level of eldership. He was also a consultant during the re-org that involved setting salaries.
In 2007 Lake City/Wedgewood and Downtown were acquired/given soft launches but it's not clear there were any notable people in those acquisitions as yet.
Mars Hill Eastside was originally The Vine, planted by Jesse Winkler, and was reabsorbed back into Mars Hill. The Vine was planted in 2005 and re-absorbed in 2009. In 2009 City on a Hill was brought in, too. It seems Bruskas was the one who got the church into the fold of Mars Hill and it wasn't long, apparently, before Bruskas became one of the executive elders. Sutton Turner seemed to be the end point (rather literally as well as figuratively) for an executive elder whose background in real estate acquisition may have been considered a basis for elder qualification. If so then there may be some evidence (if a bit circumstantial) that elders in the history of Mars Hill may have been selected partly out of concern for elder qualification and partly with some eye toward what kind of real estate they could bring along with them.
In fact the first acquisition in the history of the multi-site phase of Mars Hill Church in the wake of the 2005 HQ purchase not working out seems to have been West Seattle. Mark Driscoll has mentioned his credentials as a professional journalist (never mind evidence for that) and as a kind of seer over the years. What did he see in two guys at an Acts 29 church plant where one guy was facing burn-out tending to a dying wife on the one hand and the other was a relatively new convert fresh into his second marriage? Did he see two guys eminently qualified to tackle on the challenge of multi-site or ... is it possible he also saw that these two guys needed to literally sign off on giving the real estate he'd always wanted for Mars Hill for a decade to the corporation that was known as Mars Hill Church? Driscoll then let Noriega get fast-tracked into running what became the biblical counseling department.
And Bruskas ... Driscoll made no secret his hope for what became Mars Hill Albuquerque would be that it could be a hub for continued church planting and expansion and that he was glad to have Bruskas on the team. And Bruskas became an executive elder ... Wenatchee forgets the year. But by 2012 Bruskas was apparently one of the players in 2012's A Call for Reconciliation. Bruskas' assistant (who was also chief of security) was apparently contact for that call, which might be a question all unto itself. Why did Mars Hill get the idea that having the chief of security fielding responses to the call for reconciliation? And if Bruskas met with former members what did he have to say to them if they expressed reservations about Mark Driscoll's fitness for ministry? Did Bruskas ever tell anyone that he considered Mark to be qualified for ministry?
If Bruskas plans to go back to New Mexico and just pick up where ever he left off ... well ... Bruskas has a few things to answer for, too. Just because he wasn't the president of Mars Hill like Mark Driscoll was, or its secretary like Sutton Turner was, doesn't mean Bruskas doesn't have some questions that may be coming his way if he makes his way back to the old school grounds.
if Bruskas goes back to New Mexico we might as well raise a question about what Bruskas has ever done in the history of Mars Hill. Was he the one who got City on a Hill to Mars Hill in 2009? Then he became an executive elder? You know, that's gotten Wenatchee The Hatchet thinking.
Let's review elder roles and real estate for a bit.
Paradox, purchased and renovated by Lief Moi in the late 1990s.
Let's skip ahead to Ballard, which was acquired in 2002.
The corporate headquarters was acquired in 2005.
West Seattle was acquired in 2006 and that acquisition came about through the signatures of Bill Clem and James Noriega. By Mark Driscoll's account he'd wanted that piece of real estate for ten years and Clem had been tending a wife who was dying of ovarian cancer, while Noriega had come to Christ in 1999 and in 2006 was a newlywed on his second marriage and had a press-documented history of felonies. For some reason Noriega was greenlit for eldership at Mars Hill when he may not have been ready. Then again, he was already an elder at Doxa in 2006 and that should raise questions on who was in charge of church planting scout activity in the formative years of Acts 29. That would have been Mark Driscoll in 2001.
Bill Clem ended up being lead pastor at Mars Hill Ballard.
James Noriega was put on the Board of Directors and given co-leadership of what became recovery ministries and Redemption Groups.
Tim Beltz was Chief Operations Officer at CRISTA ministries during the period when Mark Driscoll boasted Mars Hill was able to use Schirmer Auditorium completely free of charge. Precisely how this arrangement was brokered has never been explained but it does raise a question about what happened. Did CRISTA do everything with respect to Mars Hill as a write-off? It might have been possible but Tim Beltz was installed as an executive elder almost immediately after the 2007 by-laws were passed and Beltz was part of the executive elder team until about 2010 when, for no reasons known at hand, stopped being an executive elder. Under the pre-2007 bylaws Beltz qualifications for eldership might have been spotty but after the bylaws got voted through he could be instantly assimilated to the highest level of eldership. He was also a consultant during the re-org that involved setting salaries.
In 2007 Lake City/Wedgewood and Downtown were acquired/given soft launches but it's not clear there were any notable people in those acquisitions as yet.
Mars Hill Eastside was originally The Vine, planted by Jesse Winkler, and was reabsorbed back into Mars Hill. The Vine was planted in 2005 and re-absorbed in 2009. In 2009 City on a Hill was brought in, too. It seems Bruskas was the one who got the church into the fold of Mars Hill and it wasn't long, apparently, before Bruskas became one of the executive elders. Sutton Turner seemed to be the end point (rather literally as well as figuratively) for an executive elder whose background in real estate acquisition may have been considered a basis for elder qualification. If so then there may be some evidence (if a bit circumstantial) that elders in the history of Mars Hill may have been selected partly out of concern for elder qualification and partly with some eye toward what kind of real estate they could bring along with them.
In fact the first acquisition in the history of the multi-site phase of Mars Hill Church in the wake of the 2005 HQ purchase not working out seems to have been West Seattle. Mark Driscoll has mentioned his credentials as a professional journalist (never mind evidence for that) and as a kind of seer over the years. What did he see in two guys at an Acts 29 church plant where one guy was facing burn-out tending to a dying wife on the one hand and the other was a relatively new convert fresh into his second marriage? Did he see two guys eminently qualified to tackle on the challenge of multi-site or ... is it possible he also saw that these two guys needed to literally sign off on giving the real estate he'd always wanted for Mars Hill for a decade to the corporation that was known as Mars Hill Church? Driscoll then let Noriega get fast-tracked into running what became the biblical counseling department.
And Bruskas ... Driscoll made no secret his hope for what became Mars Hill Albuquerque would be that it could be a hub for continued church planting and expansion and that he was glad to have Bruskas on the team. And Bruskas became an executive elder ... Wenatchee forgets the year. But by 2012 Bruskas was apparently one of the players in 2012's A Call for Reconciliation. Bruskas' assistant (who was also chief of security) was apparently contact for that call, which might be a question all unto itself. Why did Mars Hill get the idea that having the chief of security fielding responses to the call for reconciliation? And if Bruskas met with former members what did he have to say to them if they expressed reservations about Mark Driscoll's fitness for ministry? Did Bruskas ever tell anyone that he considered Mark to be qualified for ministry?
If Bruskas plans to go back to New Mexico and just pick up where ever he left off ... well ... Bruskas has a few things to answer for, too. Just because he wasn't the president of Mars Hill like Mark Driscoll was, or its secretary like Sutton Turner was, doesn't mean Bruskas doesn't have some questions that may be coming his way if he makes his way back to the old school grounds.
Tuesday, November 04, 2014
some questions about the future of the assets of Mars Hill Church
What's going to happen to Resurgence Publishing, Inc?
So Mars Hill is dissolving and recent reports have it that Mars Hill campuses/satellites/churches are planning to become independent. But if as some have reported all the assets were cross-collateralized into a single loan a few years ago is it possible the campuses have been lump-summed? How would churches gain independent in this setting? Perhaps once the corporation known as Mars Hill dissolves the individual attenders of the respective churches could buy up the real estate but who's got pockets for that?
And as pockets go, it's still not clear where all the funds given to and through Global went. An apology is one thing, accounting for where the money went after it was designated is another. Informally Wenatchee has heard from just enough former members who donated to fixed projects who discovered MH dumped the money in the general fund that if that thing happened to you, dear reader, don't rule out contacting the attorney general. This isn't about some guy playing 1 Cor 6 as a way to avoid financial transparency, it's about the sword not being wielded for nothing. The controversies that erupted within Mars Hill in the last year have since cast doubt on the financial transparency of its leadership set in a way that atheists could cite as a reason other churches don't deserve any tax exempt status at all. And, of course, if you've kept track of some court cases the housing allowance exemption has been questioned. In a paradox of persecution complex defenders of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill may not fully realize how this whole situation can look to secularists (not that Wenatchee is a secularist)--Mars Hill's shenanigans could be part of a process that wrecks things for other churches.
If Mars Hill's death is going to include positive steps forward divulging the finances of the church would give a more honest and clear indication of where all these would-be independent churches have come from and what they have to work with.
It has been increasingly clear that Driscoll resigned rather than face the restorative plan that was being offered to him and that some at Mars Hill seem determined to not address that that implies something about Driscoll. The article at the Christian Post features Tim Smith and Justin Dean, whose comments seem weirdly upbeat in the wake of the BoAA authorizing the dissolution of the corporation. Why's everybody so happy? Is it because they feel that though this is a "trying season" nothing's functionally changing? You'd think that with the resignation of Driscoll and the continuing public statements by former elders as to the sinfulness of the leadership culture that the public response might have more sackcloth and ashes.
Apparently not at Mars Hill. No book of Lamentations stuff there, just excitement for a future without any clear explanation of where all the money's going to come from for this future. Worse, none of these leaders have shown that there's a REASON to trust them with your money, those of you who may still be attending Mars Hill.
For those with some familiarity with the histories of Bellevue, Ballard, Olympia, Tacoma, Sammamish and the others it's not clear that any of these campuses have guys running them with the kind of charisma and momentum to keep things going for too long, at least so far as Wenatchee can surmise.
After all, Mark Driscoll's persona had functionally transformed Mars Hill into a tele-church where people watched sermons a week later on big screens. People came for Driscoll and Driscoll quitting may have signed the death warrant of the church he co-founded.
Mars Hill Church is dissolving and for those who keep track of it by UBI ...
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
MARS HILL CHURCH
The expiration date is the end of this year anyway. Driscoll's still listed as president, Turner's still listed as secretary & treasurer, and Bruskas is still listed as vice-president. And the corporation is dissolving. Is there gonna even by an FY2014 report?
Which gets us to Mark Driscoll's intellectual property, which is the only way to talk about the legal definition of what increasingly seems to be an accumulation of second-hand thoughts and jokes.
His corporation On Mission, LLC has an expiration date of ... the end of this year.
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603258287
ON MISSION, LLC
For sake of review this was precisely the kind of side company Driscoll said in 2009 that he didn't have and that he considered a sign of selfish greed. And one of the constituent parts of On Mission, LLC is the OMCRUT and another is Lasting Legacy, LLC.
Lasting legacy expires around April 2015
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603199549
LASTING LEGACY LLC
Can anyone to this day explain what Lasting Legacy even does?
Mark Driscoll's intellectual property is still one of the bigger assets Mars Hill is sitting on for the moment other than the brand/trademark of Mars Hill itself. What's that worth? Who gets the trademark? With the corporation dissolving who would get it? The creditors? Might it be gifted to Mark Driscoll who could just turn around and relaunch Mars Hill? Who knows? Driscoll said in 2007 that at a certain point "you need a whole new core." Whoever gets the trademark/branding contents gets the brand. That the would-be independent spin-off churches DON'T GET TO USE THE NAME has been made clear by Justin Dean.
But what's not clear is pretty much anything else.
asdf
So Mars Hill is dissolving and recent reports have it that Mars Hill campuses/satellites/churches are planning to become independent. But if as some have reported all the assets were cross-collateralized into a single loan a few years ago is it possible the campuses have been lump-summed? How would churches gain independent in this setting? Perhaps once the corporation known as Mars Hill dissolves the individual attenders of the respective churches could buy up the real estate but who's got pockets for that?
And as pockets go, it's still not clear where all the funds given to and through Global went. An apology is one thing, accounting for where the money went after it was designated is another. Informally Wenatchee has heard from just enough former members who donated to fixed projects who discovered MH dumped the money in the general fund that if that thing happened to you, dear reader, don't rule out contacting the attorney general. This isn't about some guy playing 1 Cor 6 as a way to avoid financial transparency, it's about the sword not being wielded for nothing. The controversies that erupted within Mars Hill in the last year have since cast doubt on the financial transparency of its leadership set in a way that atheists could cite as a reason other churches don't deserve any tax exempt status at all. And, of course, if you've kept track of some court cases the housing allowance exemption has been questioned. In a paradox of persecution complex defenders of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill may not fully realize how this whole situation can look to secularists (not that Wenatchee is a secularist)--Mars Hill's shenanigans could be part of a process that wrecks things for other churches.
If Mars Hill's death is going to include positive steps forward divulging the finances of the church would give a more honest and clear indication of where all these would-be independent churches have come from and what they have to work with.
It has been increasingly clear that Driscoll resigned rather than face the restorative plan that was being offered to him and that some at Mars Hill seem determined to not address that that implies something about Driscoll. The article at the Christian Post features Tim Smith and Justin Dean, whose comments seem weirdly upbeat in the wake of the BoAA authorizing the dissolution of the corporation. Why's everybody so happy? Is it because they feel that though this is a "trying season" nothing's functionally changing? You'd think that with the resignation of Driscoll and the continuing public statements by former elders as to the sinfulness of the leadership culture that the public response might have more sackcloth and ashes.
Apparently not at Mars Hill. No book of Lamentations stuff there, just excitement for a future without any clear explanation of where all the money's going to come from for this future. Worse, none of these leaders have shown that there's a REASON to trust them with your money, those of you who may still be attending Mars Hill.
For those with some familiarity with the histories of Bellevue, Ballard, Olympia, Tacoma, Sammamish and the others it's not clear that any of these campuses have guys running them with the kind of charisma and momentum to keep things going for too long, at least so far as Wenatchee can surmise.
After all, Mark Driscoll's persona had functionally transformed Mars Hill into a tele-church where people watched sermons a week later on big screens. People came for Driscoll and Driscoll quitting may have signed the death warrant of the church he co-founded.
Mars Hill Church is dissolving and for those who keep track of it by UBI ...
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
MARS HILL CHURCH
| UBI Number | 601677819 |
| Category | REG |
| Profit/Nonprofit | Nonprofit |
| Active/Inactive | Active |
| State Of Incorporation | WA |
| WA Filing Date | 12/22/1995 |
| Expiration Date | 12/31/2014 |
The expiration date is the end of this year anyway. Driscoll's still listed as president, Turner's still listed as secretary & treasurer, and Bruskas is still listed as vice-president. And the corporation is dissolving. Is there gonna even by an FY2014 report?
Which gets us to Mark Driscoll's intellectual property, which is the only way to talk about the legal definition of what increasingly seems to be an accumulation of second-hand thoughts and jokes.
His corporation On Mission, LLC has an expiration date of ... the end of this year.
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603258287
ON MISSION, LLC
| UBI Number | 603258287 |
| Category | LLC |
| Active/Inactive | Active |
| State Of Incorporation | CO |
| WA Filing Date | 12/06/2012 |
| Expiration Date | 12/31/2014 |
For sake of review this was precisely the kind of side company Driscoll said in 2009 that he didn't have and that he considered a sign of selfish greed. And one of the constituent parts of On Mission, LLC is the OMCRUT and another is Lasting Legacy, LLC.
Lasting legacy expires around April 2015
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603199549
LASTING LEGACY LLC
| UBI Number | 603199549 |
| Category | LLC |
| Active/Inactive | Active |
| State Of Incorporation | WA |
| WA Filing Date | 04/17/2012 |
| Expiration Date | 04/30/2015 |
| Agent Name | CT CORPORATION SYSTEM |
| Address | 505 UNION AVE SE STE120 |
| City | OLYMPIA |
| State | WA |
| ZIP | 98501 |
Governing Persons
| Title | Name | Address |
|---|---|---|
| Member,Manager | DRISCOLL , MARK | 23632 HIGHWAY 99 STE F441 EDMONDS , WA 98026 |
| Member | DRISCOLL , GRACE | 23632 HIGHWAY 99 STE F441 EDMONDS , WA 98026-9211 |
Can anyone to this day explain what Lasting Legacy even does?
Mark Driscoll's intellectual property is still one of the bigger assets Mars Hill is sitting on for the moment other than the brand/trademark of Mars Hill itself. What's that worth? Who gets the trademark? With the corporation dissolving who would get it? The creditors? Might it be gifted to Mark Driscoll who could just turn around and relaunch Mars Hill? Who knows? Driscoll said in 2007 that at a certain point "you need a whole new core." Whoever gets the trademark/branding contents gets the brand. That the would-be independent spin-off churches DON'T GET TO USE THE NAME has been made clear by Justin Dean.
But what's not clear is pretty much anything else.
asdf
Thursday, October 23, 2014
revisiting a quote from Driscoll, "I'm more a prophet than a politician" in light of a short post by Jim West this week
In the wake of shaking hands with T. D. Jakes at Elephant Room 2 Mark Driscoll wrote the following:
I’m more a prophet than a politician.
In light of Mark Driscoll's resignation last week a little post this week from Jim West jumped off the screen.
Prophets never resign or retire, they just die.
So when Driscoll resigned from being president of the corporation known as Mars Hill Church did he hand in his prophet card?
I’m more a prophet than a politician.
In light of Mark Driscoll's resignation last week a little post this week from Jim West jumped off the screen.
Prophets never resign or retire, they just die.
So when Driscoll resigned from being president of the corporation known as Mars Hill Church did he hand in his prophet card?
Sunday, October 19, 2014
a quick survey of the situation, WtH guesses Matt Rogers "might" shift from BoO to EE to fill one of the two vacancies in the EE. Any other guesses?
Sutton Turner (secretary/treasurer) resigned in September.
Mark Driscoll, who was on leave since August, resigned this last week in the middle of some kind of disciplinary/review/restoration process.
This left the presidency vacated, which is in the interim being filled by Dave Bruskas.
The problem is there still needs to be a secretary and two of three executive elder roles are vacant.
The executive elders "seem" to have to be selected from the Board of Advisors and Accountability and the executives must also be employees of Mars Hill Church.
Right now of the BoO Matt Rogers seems like a plausible guess as someone to take on one of the executive elder roles. Since the secretary is not specified by the bylaws as necessarily having to be an executive elder that role could be fulfilled by a non-executive elder, perhaps. But Jon Phelps won't quit what he's doing to become any kind of elder at Mars Hill. Michael Van Skaik is the chair and Larry Osborne has his own thing. By process of elimination Matt Rogers might be the only one on the BoAA who could even be selected from their number to take on an executive elder role.
If Bruskas is turning from "priest" into "prophet" for a while then someone's gotta take over the "priest" role and someone has to take care of the "king" role. The bylaws require at least three executive elders and also require two officers. The president is the primary teaching and vision pastor who is also the president, that much seems set in stone.
In light of what has been published today regarding Mark Driscoll's alleged departure from Mars Hill Church this makes the putting of real estate on the market look much less like an ordinary business decision that would have been made by absentee executive elders Driscoll and Turner and more like an emergency move undertaken by the Board of Advisors & Accountability, at least based on the news and associated evidence available so far.
But the thing is Matt Rogers is not (yet) an employee of Mars Hill so "if" Rogers were to become an EE the bylaws would have to be revised (could have been done by now if the BoAA met recently) or Rogers could have been accepted as an employee by the EE branch and added as an employee but "if" any or all of that has happened some kind of announcement confirming any new changes would have to show up. At this point this whole post is just some guesswork based on what is available in the news and Wenatchee The Hatchet is not necessarily awesome at guessing things in details.
Sure, Wenatchee The Hatchet called the closure of campuses and was about half right about which campuses were going to close but anyone with access to the numbers made available via Throckmorton half a year ago could have made a comparable call.
It remains to be seen who the secretary will be and who the other two executive elders are going to be but if Wenatchee The Hatchet understands the bylaws and their requirements about the selection of executive elders correctly then Matt Rogers seems like a likely candidate for an EE role.
Mark Driscoll, who was on leave since August, resigned this last week in the middle of some kind of disciplinary/review/restoration process.
This left the presidency vacated, which is in the interim being filled by Dave Bruskas.
The problem is there still needs to be a secretary and two of three executive elder roles are vacant.
The executive elders "seem" to have to be selected from the Board of Advisors and Accountability and the executives must also be employees of Mars Hill Church.
Right now of the BoO Matt Rogers seems like a plausible guess as someone to take on one of the executive elder roles. Since the secretary is not specified by the bylaws as necessarily having to be an executive elder that role could be fulfilled by a non-executive elder, perhaps. But Jon Phelps won't quit what he's doing to become any kind of elder at Mars Hill. Michael Van Skaik is the chair and Larry Osborne has his own thing. By process of elimination Matt Rogers might be the only one on the BoAA who could even be selected from their number to take on an executive elder role.
If Bruskas is turning from "priest" into "prophet" for a while then someone's gotta take over the "priest" role and someone has to take care of the "king" role. The bylaws require at least three executive elders and also require two officers. The president is the primary teaching and vision pastor who is also the president, that much seems set in stone.
In light of what has been published today regarding Mark Driscoll's alleged departure from Mars Hill Church this makes the putting of real estate on the market look much less like an ordinary business decision that would have been made by absentee executive elders Driscoll and Turner and more like an emergency move undertaken by the Board of Advisors & Accountability, at least based on the news and associated evidence available so far.
But the thing is Matt Rogers is not (yet) an employee of Mars Hill so "if" Rogers were to become an EE the bylaws would have to be revised (could have been done by now if the BoAA met recently) or Rogers could have been accepted as an employee by the EE branch and added as an employee but "if" any or all of that has happened some kind of announcement confirming any new changes would have to show up. At this point this whole post is just some guesswork based on what is available in the news and Wenatchee The Hatchet is not necessarily awesome at guessing things in details.
Sure, Wenatchee The Hatchet called the closure of campuses and was about half right about which campuses were going to close but anyone with access to the numbers made available via Throckmorton half a year ago could have made a comparable call.
It remains to be seen who the secretary will be and who the other two executive elders are going to be but if Wenatchee The Hatchet understands the bylaws and their requirements about the selection of executive elders correctly then Matt Rogers seems like a likely candidate for an EE role.
Friday, October 17, 2014
UPDATED: observations about sale of real estate at MH, under unusual circumstances BoAA can sell all or most real estate holdings in not-normal business situation
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/throckmorton-mars-hill-sammamish.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/throckmorton-mars-hill-big-box-for-sale.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/03/mars-hill-church-admin-in-ballard-for.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/oh-looks-like-u-district-real-estate-is.html
Wenatchee The Hatchet and others have noted that four (three if you treat Ballard campus and Ballard HQ as a single entity) have gone up for sale in the last month or so. Not just anyone in governance at Mars Hill is authorized to put these real estate pieces on the market. In the day to day ordinary business of Mars Hill only the executive elders seem to have the authority to decide what real estate is bought and sold. As previously noted here at WtH Ballard HQ has been on the market for some time. Ballard campus, MH U-District, and Sammamish are new. Let's trudge through the bylaws to see what bodies have authorization to decide stuff like this.
https://marshill.com/files/2014/09/04/MHC_2012_Bylaws.pdf
ARTICLE 6
MEETINGS OF THE FULL COUNCIL OF ELDERS
Section 6.9
... Any power not reserved for the full council of elders pursuant to this Section 6.9 or the board of advisors and accountability pursuant Section 7.16 shall be reserved for and be decided by the executive elder team.
So the Full Council doesn't look like it has that option. There are some settings in which the BoAA would be able to sell real estate.
ARTICLE 7
BOARD OF ADVISORS & ACCOUNTABILITY
Section 7.16. Powers
In addition to those powers required to be exercised by the board of advisors & accoutnability under the Act, the board of advisors & accountability possesses the following enumerated powers:
(a) Alter, amend, or repeal and adopt new Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws;
(b) Oversee an evaluation of the performance of the executive elder team and approve the annual compensation for each member of the executive elder team;
(c) Appoint, retain, compensate, evaluate and terminate the Church's independent auditors;
(d) Establish the annual budget for the Church;
(e) Alter, amend, or repeal and adopt a new Conflict of Interest Policy for the Church;
(f) Indemnify an officer (or former officer), or make any other indemnification other than as authorized in the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws in accordance with the Act;
(g) Adopt a plan of merger or adopt a plan of consolidation with another corporation;
(h) Authorize the sale, lease, or exchange of all or substantially all of the property and assets of the Church not in the ordinary course of business;
Let Wenatchee The Hachet red letter this next section for people who might miss the significance of this enumerated power ...
In other words, folks, if the BoAA were going to sell a ton of real estate while Mark Driscoll was on leave that wouldn't be a betrayal of Mark Driscoll, it would be the Board of Advisors & Accountability actually seeming to do its job for a change. And who would have updated the bylaws in this way? "Probably" Sutton Turner, who said in an interview that Mark Driscoll wasn't into updating bylaws or putting together policies and procedures and that's what Turner did for the church. So if anyone at Mars Hill has heard that real estate may have been put on the market without any input from Driscoll during his leave of absence, maybe thank Sutton Turner for making that possible. That is, of course, if Mars Hill made any decisions to sell off Martian real estate without consulting Mark Driscoll. But under normal circumstances, well, be patient, we'll get to that inevitable observation in time. Let's get back to the enumerated powers of the BoAA.
(i) Authorize the voluntary dissolution of the Church or revoke proceedings therefor;
(j) Adopt a plan for the distribution of the assets of the Church; or
(k) Make a material tax election under the INternal Revenue Code affecting the Church.
Any power not reserved for the full council of elders pursuant to Section 6.9 or the obard of advisors & accountability pursuant to this Section 7.16 shall be reserved for and be decided by the executive elder team.
Section 7.17
Committees of the Board
(a) The executive elder team is a standing committee of the board of advisors & accountability established pursuant to Article 8 of these Bylaws. The rights, obligations or operating procedures of the executive elder team may not be altered, amended, or repealed except by an amendment to these Bylaws approved by the board of advisors and accountability pursuant to Article 17. The board of advisors & accountability may, by resolution adopted by a majority of the entire board, designate from among its members one or more other committees, each of which shall, except as otherwise prescribed by law, have such authority of the board as may be specified in the resolution of the baord designating such committee, provided that the authority granted to such committees may not conflict with the authority granted to the executive elder team under these Bylaws. ...
In the normal line of business who sells or buys real estate on behalf of Mars Hill?
SECTION 8
EXECUTIVE ELDER TEAM
Section 8.8. Powers.
The executive elder team shall have and may exercise all powers of the Church and do all such lawful acts as are not by the Act, the Internal Revenue Code, the Articles of Incorporation or these Bylaws directed or required to be exercised or done by the full council of elders or the board of advisors & accountability and in so doing shall have the right and authority to take all actions that the executive elder team deems necessary, useful or appropriate for the management and conduct of both the ecclesiastical and civil law functions of the Church, including exercising the following specific rights and powers:
(a) Conduct the Church's business, carry on its operations, and have and exercise the powers granted by the Act in any state, territory, district or possession of the United States, or in any foreign country that may be necessary or convenient to effect any or all of the purposes for which it is organized
(b) Execute any and all agreements, contracts, documents, certifications and instruments necessary or convenient in connection with the management, maintenance and operation of the business, or in connection with managing the affairs of the Church, including opening and maintaining bank accounts on behalf of the Church.
(c) Contract on behalf of the Church for the employment and services or employees and/or independent contracts, such as lawyers and accountants, and delegate to such persons the duty to manage or supervise any of the assets or operations of the Church.
(d) Acquire by purchase, lease or otherwise any real or personal property.
(e) Finance, improve, construct, own, grant options with respect to, sell, convey, assign, mortgage or lease any real estate or any personal property. [emphasis added]
(f) Borrow money or issue evidences of indebtedness, or secure the same by mortgage, pledge or other lien on any Church assets.
(g) Execute any deed, lease, mortgage, deed of trust, mortgage note, promissory note, bill of sale, contract or other instrument purporting to convey or encumber any or all of the Church assets. [emphasis added]
(h) Prepay in whole or in part, refinance, recast, increase, modify or extend any liabilities affecting the assets of the Church or in connection therewith execute any extensions or renewals of encumbrances on any or all of such assets
(i) Commence or settle any suit or administrative proceeding before any court or governmental agency.
(j) License individuals to perform sacerdotal functions
(k) Appoint lead pastors to local Churches
(l) Appoint elders
If someone wanted to be hugely conspiratorial one could claim that it would be possible for the Board of Advisors & Accountability to decide that real estate needs to be sold for an unusual situation ... but wasn't Mark Driscoll on the Board of Advisors & Accountability as well as the Executive Elder team? In other words, lest anyone out there imagine that it was even possible for either the executive elders or the BoAA to sell three/four pieces of Martian real estate behind Driscoll's back, the bylaws show that is impossible. If real estate has been put on the market that has been owned by Mars Hill then according to the by-laws Driscoll would have to know about it and approve of it.
It sure appears to be the case that all the real estate was put on the market BEFORE Mark Driscoll announced resignation in the middle of this week. So ... the simplest and most logical explanation about real estate going on the market is that Driscoll was part of the decision to off-load the real estate. Driscoll's welcome to clear things up if he dares to speak (which is probably never going to be the case the way things are going) but until then the most sensible explanation of how so much Martian real estate went on the market is that Mark had to be involved.
Given how strongly the BoAA stood by Driscoll and Turner at the emergence of the Result Source controversy and how the BoAA decided that Driscoll was innocent of false charges that the didn't really explain ... ever ... it is still a puzzle why the BoAA would say Driscoll didn't say or do anything wrong but accepted the resignation anyway. Then again, Van Skaik's made a variety of statements about Sutton Turner that seem to fly in the face of things Turner and Driscoll said about Turner.
for that go over here.
Kind of adds some perspective. Turner resigned some time in September it seems, earlier September.
https://marshill.com/2014/09/19/the-weekly-9-19-14
...
We, as a board, are very thankful and grateful for Sutton’s gifting, expertise, and commitment in leading and guiding our church operations in the role of executive pastor and executive elder. We fully support his decision and will as a board be assisting the staff leadership teams in the transition of day-to-day responsibilities with Sutton through September 30th. Please join me in praying for the Turners as they seek direction and the next assignment that God has for them.
And Driscoll's resignation was announced, well, mere days ago.
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscoll-resigns-from-mars-hill-church/
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
In ordinary business settings the executive elders decide to sell off real estate or buy it. In unusual circumstances the BoAA can exercise the power to sell real estate.
If Mars Hill the corporation is actually going to die it has to be a decision made by the Board of Advisors & Accountability. If the word on the street is true then Jon Phelps has potentially sunk so much money into Mars Hill he'd hardly want to throw in the towel, would he? But only the BoAA seems to have the enumerated power to decide Mars Hill the corporation is dead in the water.
But there would seem to have been no version of either the BoAA or the EE team prior to Mark Driscoll's resignation that would have been making a decision to sell off the real estate of Mars Hill that did not directly involve Mark Driscoll, would there? Mars Hill, if any of you feel like you've been sold down the river by leadership the bylaws seem to make it pretty clear that selling real estate out from under your nose is something that would necessarily involve Mark's vote. If Paul Tripp resigned saying the BoAA couldn't even do its job .... what was its job? Keeping Driscoll accountable? Under "normal" circumstances Driscoll would be involved in the decision to sell off all the real estate ... but would Driscoll have greenlit selling off four pieces of real estate? Would Mark Driscoll break his rule about not responding to bloggers or journalists about this particular point?
That seems suspiciously like the BoAA and even the EE could constitute the kind of "God Box" that Mark Driscoll once said was characteristic of nasty mainline liberal denominations who had big dogs who didn't care about the churches in the trenches.
Where and when did Driscoll talk about a "God Box" you may ask? Well ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/05/mark-driscoll-in-2004-1-timothy-61-10.html
POSTSCRIPT 10-18.2014
04.09PM
Let's think about this a bit more. So Sutton Turner resigned in September and Mark Driscoll resigned this week. Driscoll was on leave and that meant that both the legal president and the legal secretary, the officers of Mars Hill Church, were both absent during the month of September. That left just executive elder Dave Bruskas and the rest of the Board of Overseers as the whole of the Board of Advisors and Accountability. If the BoAA has put real estate on the market they were the only ones left to do that because the president was on leave and the secretary quit. In a financial crisis the bylaws enumerate the power to sell off real estate to the BoAA, which may simply be what the BoAA did. This wouldn't be an easy decision but the double whammy of the president being on leave and the secretary quitting would have left the BoAA few viable options for keeping Mars Hill in a "possibly" solvent scenario than dumping a pile of real estate on to the market. Van Skaik, Osborne, Phelps and Rogers decided Mark hadn't made himself unfit for ministry but Driscoll's leave certainly put Mars Hill in the kind of already-a-crisis scenario that selling real estate wasn't going to be a huge shock.
who are currently listed as the president and secretary of Mars Hill Church?
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
Well ... for now ...
Let's recall that Sutton Turner has resigned.
Mark Driscoll has resigned.
Bear in mind that according to their bylaws
https://marshill.com/files/2014/09/04/MHC_2012_Bylaws.pdf
Mars Hill at a minimum has to have a president and a secretary, right? See Article 9. With those two roles formally vacated who's doing the work that Driscoll and Turner do? Are they still tackling that?
| UBI Number | 601677819 |
| Category | REG |
| Profit/Nonprofit | Nonprofit |
| Active/Inactive | Active |
| State Of Incorporation | WA |
| WA Filing Date | 12/22/1995 |
| Expiration Date | 12/31/2014 |
| Inactive Date | |
| Duration | Perpetual |
Well ... for now ...
| President | Driscoll, Mark | 1411 NW 50th Street SEATTLE, WA 98107 |
| Secretary | TURNER, JOHN SUTTON | 1411 NW 50TH ST SEATTLE, WA 98107 |
| Treasurer | TURNER, JOHN SUTTON | 1411 NW 50TH ST SEATTLE, WA 98107 |
| Vice President | Bruskas, Dave | 1411 NW 50th Street SEATTLE, WA 98107 |
Let's recall that Sutton Turner has resigned.
Mark Driscoll has resigned.
Bear in mind that according to their bylaws
https://marshill.com/files/2014/09/04/MHC_2012_Bylaws.pdf
Mars Hill at a minimum has to have a president and a secretary, right? See Article 9. With those two roles formally vacated who's doing the work that Driscoll and Turner do? Are they still tackling that?
Saturday, September 20, 2014
comparing Michael Van Skaik's quote of Sutton Turner to Driscoll and Turner about Turner from 2011 to 2013
https://marshill.com/2014/09/19/the-weekly-9-19-14
Earlier this month Pastor Sutton Turner informed our board of his intention to resign from his current staff and elder position. His personal decision is a sober acknowledgement that it would not be financially feasible for him to stay on staff as the church rightsizes itself, and secondly, not emotionally prudent to subject his family to what has been an ongoing season of personal attacks. We want to be clear: there are no disqualifying factors related to his decision.
Sutton put it this way: “Since 2007, Pastor Mark has impacted my life in a significant way. I am thankful to call him my brother, my pastor, and my friend. When I came to Mars Hill in 2011, my plan was to be here for a year, get theologically trained, and focus on the adoption of my son before entering back into the business world. Three and a half years later, I have been able to serve a church that I love as a staff member, but it is now time that I transition off of staff and return to the business world.”
How much earlier this month? September 10?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/10/sutton-turner-in-2012-on-mars-hill-churchs-financial-situation-we-are-in-a-big-mess/
Sutton Turner, as quoted by Michael Van Skaik, is credited lately with saying the plan when coming to Mars Hill in 2011 was to be there for a year, get theologically trained and focus on an adoption before entering back into the business world.
THE INTRODUCTION
Well ... see ... that wasn't exactly how Mark Driscoll introduced Sutton Turner in November of 2011.
http://marshill.com/2011/11/23/introducing-pastor-sutton-turner
By: Pastor Mark Driscoll
Posted: Nov 23, 2011
Earlier this year, the Turner family moved around the world just to be a part of Mars Hill Church. They’d been listening to the podcast for many years, and when the opportunity arose to join the ministry, Sutton left a lucrative job in the Middle East to use his gifts to serve the church. [emphasis added]
Pastor Sutton’s experience has already been a huge benefit. He has a degree from Harvard Business School, led multibillion-dollar organizations, and even worked as an executive pastor for a number of years at a large church in Texas [WtH, for that go here]. More importantly, he is a godly man with a delightful family.
By God’s grace, Mars Hill Church is in an amazing season of growth. With that comes significantly more complexities, however. We need help and we’ve been searching for a leader of Sutton’s caliber for awhile. God is faithful and brought the right man at the right time.
So Driscoll's account in 2011 was that when the opportunity arose to join the ministry at Mars Hill Sutton Turner relocated himself and his family to serve the church. Driscoll also stated that Mars Hill had been searching for a leader of Sutton Turner's caliber for a while. So Turner seems to have been looking for an opportunity and by Mark Driscoll's account "we" had been looking for someone like Turner for a while. It was presented as a perfect fit, that doesn't seem to fit the "just a year for some theological training to head back into the business world", does it?
For those not inclined to watch the video associated with the page, here are quotes from the first video posted to the page linked above.
circa 4:33
For those of you who don't know [the Turner family] they were podcasters that actually relocated back into the US. And Sutton had a business background as a graduate of Harvard Business School and was running $36 billion dollars a year of real estate with 1,600 employees internationally and then was listening to sermons, felt called to come and help Mars Hill Church and, you know Mars Hill Church, you know we need help. So we are very glad to have Sutton and as the complexity of the church increases we're very, very glad for his gifts and we want to thank the girls for joining us and your wife as well. Thank you guys for making the move and making the sacrifice. ...
circa 05:13
He was also in his past executive pastor at a very large church and so his gifts are very necessary in this season, because if I do the accounting I'll be doing prison ministry from the inside. ... We really need Sutton's gifts in this season and God brought the right man at the right time with the right gifts and the right family and the right attitude and the right heart. ... We are very thankful to have you.
Driscoll's got a thing for joking about who has to do stuff so that he doesn't end up doing prison ministry from the inside. In the wake of the Mars Hill Global controversy and questions about where the monies given to that go ... it's not entirely clear whether Driscoll should ever crack that joke again.
Notice that Driscoll presented Sutton as already experienced in both business and executive ministry leadership activity.
ANOTHER MENTION OF TURNER NOT BEING NEW TO MINISTRY
Sutton Turner got a mention in a letter Mark Driscoll published on September 9, 2011 that referred to Sutton Turner as on staff but not as an executive elder.
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
Pastor Dave and I both believe Pastor Scott is the best choice for this role in this season. Pastor Scott [Thomas] has been very clear in his love and commitment to Mars Hill and has said he will gladly serve wherever he is needed, which we deeply appreciate. Administratively, Pastor Jamie was our senior "king" and his departure requires very competent leadership to cover his many responsibilities. Thankfully, Pastor Jamie was a great leader and humble man. He surrounded himself with great people. This allows us to not have the kind of crisis that could otherwise ensue. Pastor Dave and I agree that Sutton Turner should function as our highest-ranking "king." Sutton is new to staff, but not to ministry. He is a former executive pastor of a large church. Educationally, he is a graduate of Texas A&M, the SMU Cox School of Business, and Harvard Business School. Professionally, he has recently served as the CEO of a company that has nearly 1,600 employees. Prior to that he served as the CEO of another company that under his leadership grew from 0 to 500 employees in the first year. He and his family moved to Seattle sensing a call to serve at Mars Hill, and we believe he is a gift from God to us for our future. He is currently well into the eldership process so be in prayer for that as well as his many duties at the church. [emphasis added]
Then there's Driscoll following statement:
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
While we celebrate the past and honor the present, we also need to prepare for the future by God’s grace. We’ve been here before, many times before, in fact. As our church grows, we encounter obstacles and hit ceilings of complexity and need to adjust as necessary to get through the next size barrier. This was true at 200, 800, 2,000, and 6,000 [emphasis added, watch for this number], just like the experts predicted. At 10,000 we are there again. I’ve been working on the beginnings of a comprehensive plan, as I can see into the future to 25,000 people a week, Lord willing.
TURNER IN INTERVIEWS AFTER TAKING THE JOB
DRISCOLL DIDN'T WANT TO UPDATE THE BYLAWS SO TURNER DID IT
http://churchexecutive.com/archives/leading-by-serving
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013
by Rez Gopez-Sindac
The reporter describes Turner's return in 2011 to America as a return to his ministry calling, and then mentions the executive pastoral role. When asked what his role as an executive pastor entailed, Turner told the reporter his job was to complement the lead pastor and try to model that relationship to the campus pastors. Turner stated that Driscoll was a capable speaker but didn't like doing spreadsheets, drafting budgets, attending meetings, recruiting employees, establishing policies and procedures, or updating bylaws. So that's what Turner did.
EXCEPT THAT IN A 2013 VIDEO DRISCOLL WAS CLAIMING HE WAS THE ONE WHO REWROTE THE BYLAWS IN 2007
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/07/the-storm-at-mars-hill-church-mark-driscoll-explains-it-all/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgl6QmHrXEo [video has been made private since Throckmorton transcribed it]
transcript of Mark Driscoll statement in a video called "Stepping Up", discussed over at Warren
Throckmorton's blog:
I don’t know what the most courageous thing I’ve ever done is. I know the one thing that was one of the hardest was, the church was growing, it had exploded, it had grown to, I think, maybe six thousand. So it made it one of the largest, fastest growing churches in America in one of the least churched cities, and in a conversation one night it was just up in our bedroom on a couch we were visiting, Grace and I were talking about past relationships and just kind of a casual conversation and we’d been together at that point for maybe seventeen, eighteen years or something. [WtH, i.e. either 2005 or 2006] I mean we’d been together a while between dating and marriage. And she just explained to me a few occasions where she had been sexually assaulted, raped, and abused [prior to my meeting her, (WT's transcript differs from what is presented here and this is punctuation that WtH believes makes more sense of Driscoll's actual words)]. I just broke and I just started weeping, thinking that I had not known that about my wife, and she just said it matter of factly, like she was just reading the script of someone else’s life. And there was no emotion in her, and I could tell she didn’t even really understand what she had just explained. That sort of led to a season of me really getting to know her, and her getting to know her past, and us getting to know Jesus in a deeper way.
It was around that time I could just tell that she’s gonna need me available more.
Emotionally present more, we just had our 5th child. So the timing’s not great. We just decided to go multi-site in video, cause we had outgrown our location and everybody’s looking and all the critics are around and is this gonna make it? A couple of things combined at that season as well, overwork and stress and everything else. I fatigued my adrenal glands, I was in a bad place health-wise, was not sleeping. It was a pretty dark time for me, and I told Grace, “For me to recover, for you to recover, for us to build our friendship, I feel like we’re kind of at that watershed moment where our marriage is gonna get better or it’s gonna get colder, and you’ve really opened yourself up and I need to love and serve you better and pursue you more.”
I said so I got to change the church. I mean all the way down, I have to rewrite the Constitution, bylaws, I got to let some people go. I have to put in place some hard performance reviews. I’ve got to be willing to lose a lot of relationships, endure criticism, preach less times, hand off more authority, and I said I don’t know if the church is going to make it and I don’t know if I’m going to make it.
I told Grace, I said “I’m going to give it one year, and if it doesn’t get fixed, I’m going to quit, because you’re more important to me than ministry, and I feel like if I quit right now, the church will probably die, and there’s all these thousands of people that met Jesus.” I said “So we’re either going to change it or I’m going to quit, but we’re not going to do this forever and you’re my priority,” and that led to everything that I feared, quite frankly. [emphasis added]
It was really brutal, and I couldn’t tell the story at the time of and here’s why- because Grace is really hurting, and I love her, and I’m broken, and we need to pull back and make some course corrections because it’s Grace’s story to tell, and she wasn’t ready at that point to tell that story, and I had no right to tell that story for her.
And so everybody got to speculate for years what the motive was, “oh he’s power hungry, he’s controlling, he wants to take over, he doesn’t love people, you know he’s just a bully.” And no, it’s actually he’s broken and his wife is hurting and the church is gonna probably literally kill him or put him in the hospital and his wife needs him right now, so he’s gotta make some adjustments. So, you know, by the grace of God, we weathered that storm.
Of course it's impossible to consult the entire timeline at Joyful Exiles without having the impression that it was Jamie Munson who was revising the bylaws and that it was on account of not respecting Munson's authoritah that Meyer and Petry were fired. But in Driscoll's 2013 video "Stepping Up" Driscoll explicitly took credit for having to do the kinds of things Sutton Turner said in an interview Driscoll didn't really want to have to do.
Okay, maybe that's the case but the evidence that Driscoll ever spent so much as an hour drafting bylaws has never been established in the history of Mars Hill.
THAT OLD TURNER QUOTE WHERE "MARS HILL REALLY DID NOT GROW UNTIL 2007 ... "
While the original piece was pulled some time ago (for reasons that can't be known) there's an interesting quote attributed to Turner
And, Sutton days “Mars Hill really did not grow until 2007, from 1 location and 2,000 in attendance.”
Of course that's impossible to assert truthfully that Mars Hill did not grow until 2007 since the constant specter of meteoric growth outpacign the competency of Mars Hill leadership was a topic brought up by Mark Driscoll in 2007 as a reason for the necessity of a re-org.
Then again ... given how little Turner seems to have actually known about the history of Mars Hill it's not a surprise he couldn't get such a basic thing about its history right. For a more detailed explanation of how attendance was at 6k by the 2007 re-org, here's a long quote from Driscoll in an interview with Justin Taylor.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/05/06/an-interview-with-mark-driscoll-on-the-book-that-cost-mars-hill-a-thousand-church-members-and-gave-him-an-intestinal-ulcer—and-whether-or-not-the-new-calvinist-coalition-will-hold-together/
As we expand to more campuses, states, and possibly even nations, I wanted to do all I could to ensure doctrinal fidelity and clarity for our church. As the tree grows and the fruit increases, the roots need to sink deep as well. So, when our attendance was at about six thousand people a few years ago, we did something unprecedented. We canceled out the membership of everyone in our church [emphasis added in both types] and I preached the Doctrine series for thirteen weeks. Each sermon was well over an hour and included me answering text-messaged questions from our people.
Those who made it through the entire series were interviewed, and those who evidenced true faith in Christ and signed our membership covenant were installed as new members.[emphasis added] We had always had a high bar for membership, but I wanted to raise that bar higher as we pursued our goal of becoming, by God’s grace, a church of fifty thousand. In so doing, we lost about a thousand people, dropped to five thousand total, and missed budget for the first time in our church’s history. [emphasis added] We then rebounded over the next few years to ten thousand people a week and as many as thirteen thousand on our peak weekend. We had pruned, which hurt, but then we harvested, which was healing. It’s not all about the numbers, and we were willing to lose a lot of people, but God proved that there is power in the gospel and that a people united around core biblical doctrine can be used by God to bear much fruit by grace.
STATEMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO PAUL TRIPP BY THE NINE
Turner's short quote about Mars Hill not really growing until 2007 is not just not true in terms of the history of Mars Hill struggling to adapt to growth, by Driscoll's account, the Doctrine series led to the loss of 1,000 people who were leaving during the period in which many left out of objection to the terminations and trials of Petry and Meyer. So Mars Hill not only wasn't that small and not only didn't only start growing in 2007 they LOST PEOPLE because of things that happened in 2007 and early 2008.
This may or may not serve as a conceptual transition to statements credited to Paul Tripp.
It would appear in light of statements attributed to Paul Tripp, former member of the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability that Tripp had a drastically different assessment of Turner's suitability for ministry compared to Bruskas and Turner.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/08/Concerns-and-Critical-Information-for-the-Elders-of-Mars-Hill-Church.pdf
from page 5 of 7
“Sutton is fundamentally unhelpful for Mark. Sutton plays to all of Mark’s weaknesses and none of Mark’s strengths.” He pleaded with them saying that what Mark needs in an Executive Pastor is a “55 year-old seasoned godly man who watches over Mark’s soul as he administrates the church, and who can pull Mark into a room and say ‘you can’t do that in a meeting’ and you need to call another meeting and ask for forgiveness from the people you just spoke to. He doesn’t need a man who is his trigger man.” He made it clear that Sutton lacks the emotional and spiritual maturity to be where he is at in leadership.
-----
From behind the scenes on the BOAA Paul observed that “A statement that comes from somebody, through Sutton, to you guys, just changes dramatically.” He followed this by saying that he did not think Sutton intended to be consistently untruthful, but that regardless he does end up spinning things constantly out of fear.
SUMMING UP TWO DIFFERENT NARRATIVE THREADS
So, for the sake of review, while Van Skaik's account on Sutton Turner's behalf states that Turner figured he'd come by for a year, get some theological training, and had back into the business world,
But this is ... a difference in emphasis compared to years of stating that Sutton Turner was the perfect fit for Mars Hill, that he was experienced in business as well as in ministry and that Mars Hill had badly needed someone of his skill set. Furthermore in subsequent press coverage Sutton Turner let reporters indicate he'd found his calling in being an executive leader at Mars Hill.
So, all that suggests that the recent statement by Michael Van Skaik should raise some questions about why, if Sutton Turner really only planned to train theologically for a year, that none other than Mark Driscoll described Turner as coming to America in 2011 specifically because a ministry opportunity arose in Mars Hill for which Turner was a good fit and for which "we" at Mars Hill were seeking a candidate of Turner's abilities, education and experience? Every executive elder explanation Wenatchee The Hatchet has been able to find referring to Sutton Turner between 2011 on previous to Van Skaik's recent account of Turner explaining himself seems to indicate that Turner was in for the long haul and for the executive leadership position for which he was considered "kingly".
This change of narrative seems abrupt and it may be a change in emphasis but if so it raises the question of why, if Turner felt he needed theological training, he was presented by Mark Driscoll and Dave Bruskas as so already perfect for the job they had in mind for him?
UPDATE FROM THE BOAA
Dear Mars Hill,Earlier this month Pastor Sutton Turner informed our board of his intention to resign from his current staff and elder position. His personal decision is a sober acknowledgement that it would not be financially feasible for him to stay on staff as the church rightsizes itself, and secondly, not emotionally prudent to subject his family to what has been an ongoing season of personal attacks. We want to be clear: there are no disqualifying factors related to his decision.
Sutton put it this way: “Since 2007, Pastor Mark has impacted my life in a significant way. I am thankful to call him my brother, my pastor, and my friend. When I came to Mars Hill in 2011, my plan was to be here for a year, get theologically trained, and focus on the adoption of my son before entering back into the business world. Three and a half years later, I have been able to serve a church that I love as a staff member, but it is now time that I transition off of staff and return to the business world.”
How much earlier this month? September 10?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/10/sutton-turner-in-2012-on-mars-hill-churchs-financial-situation-we-are-in-a-big-mess/
Sutton Turner, as quoted by Michael Van Skaik, is credited lately with saying the plan when coming to Mars Hill in 2011 was to be there for a year, get theologically trained and focus on an adoption before entering back into the business world.
THE INTRODUCTION
Well ... see ... that wasn't exactly how Mark Driscoll introduced Sutton Turner in November of 2011.
http://marshill.com/2011/11/23/introducing-pastor-sutton-turner
By: Pastor Mark Driscoll
Posted: Nov 23, 2011
Earlier this year, the Turner family moved around the world just to be a part of Mars Hill Church. They’d been listening to the podcast for many years, and when the opportunity arose to join the ministry, Sutton left a lucrative job in the Middle East to use his gifts to serve the church. [emphasis added]
Pastor Sutton’s experience has already been a huge benefit. He has a degree from Harvard Business School, led multibillion-dollar organizations, and even worked as an executive pastor for a number of years at a large church in Texas [WtH, for that go here]. More importantly, he is a godly man with a delightful family.
By God’s grace, Mars Hill Church is in an amazing season of growth. With that comes significantly more complexities, however. We need help and we’ve been searching for a leader of Sutton’s caliber for awhile. God is faithful and brought the right man at the right time.
So Driscoll's account in 2011 was that when the opportunity arose to join the ministry at Mars Hill Sutton Turner relocated himself and his family to serve the church. Driscoll also stated that Mars Hill had been searching for a leader of Sutton Turner's caliber for a while. So Turner seems to have been looking for an opportunity and by Mark Driscoll's account "we" had been looking for someone like Turner for a while. It was presented as a perfect fit, that doesn't seem to fit the "just a year for some theological training to head back into the business world", does it?
For those not inclined to watch the video associated with the page, here are quotes from the first video posted to the page linked above.
circa 4:33
For those of you who don't know [the Turner family] they were podcasters that actually relocated back into the US. And Sutton had a business background as a graduate of Harvard Business School and was running $36 billion dollars a year of real estate with 1,600 employees internationally and then was listening to sermons, felt called to come and help Mars Hill Church and, you know Mars Hill Church, you know we need help. So we are very glad to have Sutton and as the complexity of the church increases we're very, very glad for his gifts and we want to thank the girls for joining us and your wife as well. Thank you guys for making the move and making the sacrifice. ...
circa 05:13
He was also in his past executive pastor at a very large church and so his gifts are very necessary in this season, because if I do the accounting I'll be doing prison ministry from the inside. ... We really need Sutton's gifts in this season and God brought the right man at the right time with the right gifts and the right family and the right attitude and the right heart. ... We are very thankful to have you.
Driscoll's got a thing for joking about who has to do stuff so that he doesn't end up doing prison ministry from the inside. In the wake of the Mars Hill Global controversy and questions about where the monies given to that go ... it's not entirely clear whether Driscoll should ever crack that joke again.
Notice that Driscoll presented Sutton as already experienced in both business and executive ministry leadership activity.
ANOTHER MENTION OF TURNER NOT BEING NEW TO MINISTRY
Sutton Turner got a mention in a letter Mark Driscoll published on September 9, 2011 that referred to Sutton Turner as on staff but not as an executive elder.
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
Pastor Dave and I both believe Pastor Scott is the best choice for this role in this season. Pastor Scott [Thomas] has been very clear in his love and commitment to Mars Hill and has said he will gladly serve wherever he is needed, which we deeply appreciate. Administratively, Pastor Jamie was our senior "king" and his departure requires very competent leadership to cover his many responsibilities. Thankfully, Pastor Jamie was a great leader and humble man. He surrounded himself with great people. This allows us to not have the kind of crisis that could otherwise ensue. Pastor Dave and I agree that Sutton Turner should function as our highest-ranking "king." Sutton is new to staff, but not to ministry. He is a former executive pastor of a large church. Educationally, he is a graduate of Texas A&M, the SMU Cox School of Business, and Harvard Business School. Professionally, he has recently served as the CEO of a company that has nearly 1,600 employees. Prior to that he served as the CEO of another company that under his leadership grew from 0 to 500 employees in the first year. He and his family moved to Seattle sensing a call to serve at Mars Hill, and we believe he is a gift from God to us for our future. He is currently well into the eldership process so be in prayer for that as well as his many duties at the church. [emphasis added]
Then there's Driscoll following statement:
http://marshill.com/2011/09/06/important-letters-from-pastors
While we celebrate the past and honor the present, we also need to prepare for the future by God’s grace. We’ve been here before, many times before, in fact. As our church grows, we encounter obstacles and hit ceilings of complexity and need to adjust as necessary to get through the next size barrier. This was true at 200, 800, 2,000, and 6,000 [emphasis added, watch for this number], just like the experts predicted. At 10,000 we are there again. I’ve been working on the beginnings of a comprehensive plan, as I can see into the future to 25,000 people a week, Lord willing.
TURNER IN INTERVIEWS AFTER TAKING THE JOB
DRISCOLL DIDN'T WANT TO UPDATE THE BYLAWS SO TURNER DID IT
http://churchexecutive.com/archives/leading-by-serving
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013
by Rez Gopez-Sindac
The reporter describes Turner's return in 2011 to America as a return to his ministry calling, and then mentions the executive pastoral role. When asked what his role as an executive pastor entailed, Turner told the reporter his job was to complement the lead pastor and try to model that relationship to the campus pastors. Turner stated that Driscoll was a capable speaker but didn't like doing spreadsheets, drafting budgets, attending meetings, recruiting employees, establishing policies and procedures, or updating bylaws. So that's what Turner did.
EXCEPT THAT IN A 2013 VIDEO DRISCOLL WAS CLAIMING HE WAS THE ONE WHO REWROTE THE BYLAWS IN 2007
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/07/the-storm-at-mars-hill-church-mark-driscoll-explains-it-all/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgl6QmHrXEo [video has been made private since Throckmorton transcribed it]
transcript of Mark Driscoll statement in a video called "Stepping Up", discussed over at Warren
Throckmorton's blog:
I don’t know what the most courageous thing I’ve ever done is. I know the one thing that was one of the hardest was, the church was growing, it had exploded, it had grown to, I think, maybe six thousand. So it made it one of the largest, fastest growing churches in America in one of the least churched cities, and in a conversation one night it was just up in our bedroom on a couch we were visiting, Grace and I were talking about past relationships and just kind of a casual conversation and we’d been together at that point for maybe seventeen, eighteen years or something. [WtH, i.e. either 2005 or 2006] I mean we’d been together a while between dating and marriage. And she just explained to me a few occasions where she had been sexually assaulted, raped, and abused [prior to my meeting her, (WT's transcript differs from what is presented here and this is punctuation that WtH believes makes more sense of Driscoll's actual words)]. I just broke and I just started weeping, thinking that I had not known that about my wife, and she just said it matter of factly, like she was just reading the script of someone else’s life. And there was no emotion in her, and I could tell she didn’t even really understand what she had just explained. That sort of led to a season of me really getting to know her, and her getting to know her past, and us getting to know Jesus in a deeper way.
It was around that time I could just tell that she’s gonna need me available more.
Emotionally present more, we just had our 5th child. So the timing’s not great. We just decided to go multi-site in video, cause we had outgrown our location and everybody’s looking and all the critics are around and is this gonna make it? A couple of things combined at that season as well, overwork and stress and everything else. I fatigued my adrenal glands, I was in a bad place health-wise, was not sleeping. It was a pretty dark time for me, and I told Grace, “For me to recover, for you to recover, for us to build our friendship, I feel like we’re kind of at that watershed moment where our marriage is gonna get better or it’s gonna get colder, and you’ve really opened yourself up and I need to love and serve you better and pursue you more.”
I said so I got to change the church. I mean all the way down, I have to rewrite the Constitution, bylaws, I got to let some people go. I have to put in place some hard performance reviews. I’ve got to be willing to lose a lot of relationships, endure criticism, preach less times, hand off more authority, and I said I don’t know if the church is going to make it and I don’t know if I’m going to make it.
I told Grace, I said “I’m going to give it one year, and if it doesn’t get fixed, I’m going to quit, because you’re more important to me than ministry, and I feel like if I quit right now, the church will probably die, and there’s all these thousands of people that met Jesus.” I said “So we’re either going to change it or I’m going to quit, but we’re not going to do this forever and you’re my priority,” and that led to everything that I feared, quite frankly. [emphasis added]
It was really brutal, and I couldn’t tell the story at the time of and here’s why- because Grace is really hurting, and I love her, and I’m broken, and we need to pull back and make some course corrections because it’s Grace’s story to tell, and she wasn’t ready at that point to tell that story, and I had no right to tell that story for her.
And so everybody got to speculate for years what the motive was, “oh he’s power hungry, he’s controlling, he wants to take over, he doesn’t love people, you know he’s just a bully.” And no, it’s actually he’s broken and his wife is hurting and the church is gonna probably literally kill him or put him in the hospital and his wife needs him right now, so he’s gotta make some adjustments. So, you know, by the grace of God, we weathered that storm.
Of course it's impossible to consult the entire timeline at Joyful Exiles without having the impression that it was Jamie Munson who was revising the bylaws and that it was on account of not respecting Munson's authoritah that Meyer and Petry were fired. But in Driscoll's 2013 video "Stepping Up" Driscoll explicitly took credit for having to do the kinds of things Sutton Turner said in an interview Driscoll didn't really want to have to do.
Okay, maybe that's the case but the evidence that Driscoll ever spent so much as an hour drafting bylaws has never been established in the history of Mars Hill.
THAT OLD TURNER QUOTE WHERE "MARS HILL REALLY DID NOT GROW UNTIL 2007 ... "
While the original piece was pulled some time ago (for reasons that can't be known) there's an interesting quote attributed to Turner
And, Sutton days “Mars Hill really did not grow until 2007, from 1 location and 2,000 in attendance.”
Of course that's impossible to assert truthfully that Mars Hill did not grow until 2007 since the constant specter of meteoric growth outpacign the competency of Mars Hill leadership was a topic brought up by Mark Driscoll in 2007 as a reason for the necessity of a re-org.
Then again ... given how little Turner seems to have actually known about the history of Mars Hill it's not a surprise he couldn't get such a basic thing about its history right. For a more detailed explanation of how attendance was at 6k by the 2007 re-org, here's a long quote from Driscoll in an interview with Justin Taylor.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/05/06/an-interview-with-mark-driscoll-on-the-book-that-cost-mars-hill-a-thousand-church-members-and-gave-him-an-intestinal-ulcer—and-whether-or-not-the-new-calvinist-coalition-will-hold-together/
As we expand to more campuses, states, and possibly even nations, I wanted to do all I could to ensure doctrinal fidelity and clarity for our church. As the tree grows and the fruit increases, the roots need to sink deep as well. So, when our attendance was at about six thousand people a few years ago, we did something unprecedented. We canceled out the membership of everyone in our church [emphasis added in both types] and I preached the Doctrine series for thirteen weeks. Each sermon was well over an hour and included me answering text-messaged questions from our people.
Those who made it through the entire series were interviewed, and those who evidenced true faith in Christ and signed our membership covenant were installed as new members.[emphasis added] We had always had a high bar for membership, but I wanted to raise that bar higher as we pursued our goal of becoming, by God’s grace, a church of fifty thousand. In so doing, we lost about a thousand people, dropped to five thousand total, and missed budget for the first time in our church’s history. [emphasis added] We then rebounded over the next few years to ten thousand people a week and as many as thirteen thousand on our peak weekend. We had pruned, which hurt, but then we harvested, which was healing. It’s not all about the numbers, and we were willing to lose a lot of people, but God proved that there is power in the gospel and that a people united around core biblical doctrine can be used by God to bear much fruit by grace.
STATEMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO PAUL TRIPP BY THE NINE
Turner's short quote about Mars Hill not really growing until 2007 is not just not true in terms of the history of Mars Hill struggling to adapt to growth, by Driscoll's account, the Doctrine series led to the loss of 1,000 people who were leaving during the period in which many left out of objection to the terminations and trials of Petry and Meyer. So Mars Hill not only wasn't that small and not only didn't only start growing in 2007 they LOST PEOPLE because of things that happened in 2007 and early 2008.
This may or may not serve as a conceptual transition to statements credited to Paul Tripp.
It would appear in light of statements attributed to Paul Tripp, former member of the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability that Tripp had a drastically different assessment of Turner's suitability for ministry compared to Bruskas and Turner.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/08/Concerns-and-Critical-Information-for-the-Elders-of-Mars-Hill-Church.pdf
from page 5 of 7
“Sutton is fundamentally unhelpful for Mark. Sutton plays to all of Mark’s weaknesses and none of Mark’s strengths.” He pleaded with them saying that what Mark needs in an Executive Pastor is a “55 year-old seasoned godly man who watches over Mark’s soul as he administrates the church, and who can pull Mark into a room and say ‘you can’t do that in a meeting’ and you need to call another meeting and ask for forgiveness from the people you just spoke to. He doesn’t need a man who is his trigger man.” He made it clear that Sutton lacks the emotional and spiritual maturity to be where he is at in leadership.
-----
From behind the scenes on the BOAA Paul observed that “A statement that comes from somebody, through Sutton, to you guys, just changes dramatically.” He followed this by saying that he did not think Sutton intended to be consistently untruthful, but that regardless he does end up spinning things constantly out of fear.
SUMMING UP TWO DIFFERENT NARRATIVE THREADS
So, for the sake of review, while Van Skaik's account on Sutton Turner's behalf states that Turner figured he'd come by for a year, get some theological training, and had back into the business world,
But this is ... a difference in emphasis compared to years of stating that Sutton Turner was the perfect fit for Mars Hill, that he was experienced in business as well as in ministry and that Mars Hill had badly needed someone of his skill set. Furthermore in subsequent press coverage Sutton Turner let reporters indicate he'd found his calling in being an executive leader at Mars Hill.
So, all that suggests that the recent statement by Michael Van Skaik should raise some questions about why, if Sutton Turner really only planned to train theologically for a year, that none other than Mark Driscoll described Turner as coming to America in 2011 specifically because a ministry opportunity arose in Mars Hill for which Turner was a good fit and for which "we" at Mars Hill were seeking a candidate of Turner's abilities, education and experience? Every executive elder explanation Wenatchee The Hatchet has been able to find referring to Sutton Turner between 2011 on previous to Van Skaik's recent account of Turner explaining himself seems to indicate that Turner was in for the long haul and for the executive leadership position for which he was considered "kingly".
This change of narrative seems abrupt and it may be a change in emphasis but if so it raises the question of why, if Turner felt he needed theological training, he was presented by Mark Driscoll and Dave Bruskas as so already perfect for the job they had in mind for him?
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